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Making Plastic Smarter
With Protein
How do you improve on plastic, a modern
material that has already changed the way we do everything
from design medical devices to build cars? Embed it with
specialized proteins called enzymes, says Shekhar Garde,
assistant professor of chemical engineering at Rensselaer.
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Enzyme
Function in Low Water Medium |
“Such protein-enhanced plastics might
someday be able to act as ultra-hygienic surfaces or sensors
to detect the presence of various chemicals,” says Garde.
These types of materials could have a wide range of applications,
for example, in the security or medical industries.
Garde and his graduate student Lu Yang presented
their research at the 225th national meeting of the American
Chemical Society, held March 23-27 in New Orleans, La.
To learn what it takes to successfully
integrate proteins into a dry substance such as plastic,
Garde and Yang use molecular dynamics (MD) simulations
to create a computer model of the proteins and study
the molecules in both watery and non-watery environments
such as organic solvents.
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Proteins require water to function. Nonwatery
environments do not provide the driving force necessary
to keep proteins in their normally intricately folded state;
unfolded, the molecules cease to function. To learn what
it takes to successfully integrate proteins into a dry substance
such as plastic, Garde and Yang use molecular dynamics (MD)
simulations to create a computer model of the proteins and
study the molecules in both watery and non-watery environments
such as organic solvents. They are working in collaboration
with Jonathan Dordick, the Howard P. Isermann ‘42
Professor of Chemical Engineering, who conducted the initial
protein research.
Proteins are “molecular machines,”
according to Garde, uniquely able to efficiently and reliably
conduct chemical processes. Their powerful activity, however,
is limited to relatively low temperatures and pressures.
Helping proteins adapt to a non-water-based environment
may actually increase the resiliency of the molecules and
make them useful in situations they otherwise would not
survive in, such as exposure to high temperatures or other
extreme conditions. In addition to preserving protein’s
known actions, the researchers speculate that they may also
“discover that proteins could perform some new functions
[in dry environments], something that they could not do
in water,” according to Yang.
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