Harnessing Membrane Protein Properties in Abiotic Hybrid Materials

This project seeks to establish, understand, and control the effects of composition, conditions, and nanoscale confinement on the structure and function of trans-membrane proteins in abiotic, nanostructured protein-silica-surfactant films. These goals are motivated by the opportunities such insights present for the design and syntheses of new biologically-enabled materials with novel and highly selective mass transport for portable water-treatment and energy-generation applications. The strategy to achieve these goals is to understand and exploit the molecular-level interactions, local environments and materials properties of nanostructured inorganic-organic hybrid materials to incorporate functionally-active membrane proteins into synthetic host materials. The diverse functionalities of membrane proteins are of enormous interest to scientists and engineers, who aspire to understand, adopt, and exploit them for novel materials applications.