Dynamics and charge transport in individualized macromolecules
by Alaa Hassan
Synthesis and Incorporation of Photoswitches into Amyloidogenic Peptides
by André Paschold
Location: MLUconf
Time: 15.20 – 17.00
Abstracts
Dynamics and charge transport in individualized macromolecules
by Alaa Hassan
Detailed insight into the charge transport properties and other functionalities of synthetic polymers as well as biological macromolecules on the molecular level is highly desired in advancing nano-technology, however often it can be technically challenging. My project investigates the charge transport and the dynamics in individualized polymeric chains by means of broadband dielectric spectroscopy (BDS). This method has revealed altered dynamics under conditions of spatial confinement in the past but in order to address samples at such molecular level, a nano-dielectric spectroscopy will be developed by refining a nanostructured electrode setup combined with a procedure of chemical surface modification. The latter involves the deposition of a very regular pattern of gold particles of well-controllable size and separation on the nanometer scale. These gold nanodots act as anchors for the chemical grafting of end-functionalized polymers (e.g. thiol terminated PEO). To determine the (average) number and conformation of chains grafted to each nanodot, their volume and shape are characterized by AFM. In addition to the examination of certain properties in individualized polymers, the aim is also to use the large range of frequencies covered by BDS (10-3-107 Hz) to provide molecular relaxation times that can fill the gap between methods probing very short times such as NMR (10-8 s) and long times like single molecule spectroscopy (μs).
Synthesis and Incorporation of Photoswitches into Amyloidogenic Peptides
by André Paschold
Amyloidogenic peptides are a highly interesting class of proteins, due to their importance in context of diseases e.g. Alzheimer or Parkinson disease and also as well defined-functional peptides in different organisms. All those peptides have the ability to form supramolecular structures so called fibrils. In our research we investigate the process of fibril formation specifically for the human PTH. Therefore, we design photoswitches with specific photophysical properties and incorporate them via SPS in different parts of the peptide.
