PME Thesis Defense: Whitney Fowler

Engineering a Protein-Inspired Synthetic Material to Sequester and Sense Phosphate<br /><br />

Biological materials possess highly sophisticated material properties and many engineers have sought to translate these properties into tunable synthetic materials to address emerging societal challenges. One intriguing biological property to mimic is the ability of protein to molecularly recognize and bind to specific targets, which could be repurposed to address resource recovery from water or detection of aqueous contaminants. However, tunable bioinspired material platforms with this function are rare. This thesis presents the design, synthesis, and characterization of a material platform based on peptide amphiphile micelles that exploits the natural binding ability of protein to selectively and reversibly bind to phosphate. By utilizing a stimuli-responsive pH trigger, this material is engineered for resource recovery and detection of phosphate by incorporating a proteinextracted binding sequence into the material framework. Overall, this work presents a rational design and thorough study of a novel biomimetic material, offering valuable insight for future materials designed to this end.

Zoom Meeting ID: 99838867892 Passcode: 740306<br /><br />

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