SEMINAR: High Throughput Screening for Protein Biomanufacturability
Guest: Melik Demirel, Penn. State University, USA
Title: High Throughput Screening for Protein Biomanufacturability (MAT, BIO, CHEM)
Date/Time: 5 November 2025, 14:40
Location: Zoom TBA
Abstract: Protein materials give biological systems remarkable abilities, including tunable control over structural, optical, expandable, electrical, self-healing, and thermal properties. So far, our studies of these protein materials have mainly focused on natural variants produced by evolution, which has limited our understanding of how these proteins display their useful properties. Essentially, the rules linking protein sequence, structure, and function are complex and require the development of new synthetic biology technologies to uncover these rules. For globular (non-material) proteins (e.g., enzymes), significant progress has been made in protein design and engineering. However, we still cannot design and engineer structural proteins (e.g., those made of repetitive units), which will need new simulation methods, advanced library creation techniques, and high-throughput characterization approaches. In this talk, we will discuss our high-throughput platform for exploring the sequence-structure-property landscapes of various protein materials. We will present data from this platform for designing, expressing, and studying millions of block copolymeric proteins, like squid ring teeth (SRT) protein variants. We will present data on millions of designed protein variants and analyze these libraries using various high-throughput assays that connect material and manufacturing properties to output signals (including cell-based biosensors, fluorescence, hyperspectral FRET, and signal-activated sorting). Specifically, we will describe a high-throughput, microfluidic platform that allows growth, segregation, repeated imaging, perturbation, and sorting of single cells, expanding the range of measurements to include electrical, mechanical, and additional optical analyses.
Bio: Prof. Demirel, Lloyd and Dorothy Huck Chair in Biomimetic Materials, is a scientist and innovator (National Academy of Innovators-NAI member) with expertise in biotechnology, nanotechnology and materials science. He also founded a climatech company for decarbonizing textiles (Tandem Repeat, Inc.) He is currently directing the Center for Advanced Fiber Technologies (CRAFT). Over the last two decades, Professor Demirel and his research team have focused on developing functional nanoscale biomimetic materials. His team designed, fabricated and synthesized advanced materials by studying the functional transitions of biomimetic systems, both computationally and experimentally. Prof. Demirel's achievements have been recognized, in part, through his receipt of a Young Investigator Award from the Department of Defense, an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, as a Wyss Institute Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, an Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter Junior Fellowship, The Nicholas and Gelsa Pelick Biotechnology Innovation Award and the Pearce Development Professorship, and a Penn State Engineering Alumni Society Outstanding Research Award. Prof. Demirel received his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA, and BS/MS degrees from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey. Prof. Demirel is well known for his ground-breaking work on bioinspired programmable materials.