PME Materials Special Seminar - Tianyi Jin

Bio-inspired Random Heteropolymers Proteins are the workhorses of living organisms. While individual proteins operate with precision and selectivity, their sensitivity to environmental changes and high production costs have driven scientists to explore synthetic alternatives. Single-chain nanoparticles (SCNPs) are small globules typically composed of a random heteropolymer (RHP) consisting of two or more chemistries. Over the past two decades, RHPs have been employed in various applications, including enzyme-, porin-, and chaperone-mimetics. Understanding how RHPs can achieve functions once thought to be exclusive to sequence-defined natural proteins is of significant interest. In this talk, I will present our work on how RHPs leverage a sequence ensemble to achieve designated functions through stochastic one-pot synthesis. These globules exhibit a key biological property known as hydration frustration, in which some hydrophilic groups become dehydrated and buried, while certain hydrophobic groups are exposed at the water interface. This frustrated state is fundamental to protein function, and we believe it is critical for the future development of SCNPs for biological and biomimetic applications. Finally, I will briefly discuss our efforts to tackle protein evolution through a polymer perspective.

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