Biomolecular Construction of Nanostructures

"Biology provides a vast number of examples of nanostructures produced at a level of precision that is superior to those that we can produce in the laboratory The diversity of naturally occurring S-layers suggests these self-assembled structures aregenetically controlled and can therefore be manipulated though recombinant process. In the Phase I, Agave BioSystems successfully demonstrated that bacterial S-layer proteins can be used to develop novel structures with pores regularly space nanometersapart. The overriding goal of this Phase II proposal will be to harness the self-replicating and self-assembling characteristics of bacterial S-layer proteins and to use them in the fabrication of nano-sized structures. A variety of S-layers, each withvarying geometric characteristics will be used for this purpose. In this Phase II, Agave BioSystems will develop a library of S-layers for the generation of nanostructure templates and demonstrate their use in several applications including optical datastorage, and patterning of photoactive protein complexes, conductive carbon nanofibers, and semiconductor nanowires. Through the development of S-layers as a foundation for the generation of nanostructures templates, Agave BioSystem can provide thebreakthrough enabling technology for exploitation of the vast potential applications of nano-based technologies."