Design, Synthesis and Applications of Biologically Inspired Nanomaterials

Ehud M. Landau studied chemistry at the ETH Zurich, and earned his PhD (1988) at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel in the area of structural chemistry. With a Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellowship, he carried out postdoctoral work in the Department of Chemistry, UC Berkeley, California and at the Institute of Polymers, ETH Zurich (1988-1992) in the areas of electrochemistry, surface chemistry and biopolymers. From 1993 to 1999 he was a senior research associate in the Department of Molecular Microbiology at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, working in the area of structural biology of membrane proteins. In 2000 he was appointed as Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas where he established and directed the Membrane Protein Laboratory and was Vice Chairman, as well as Senior Scientist in the Sealy Center for Structural Biology. He has been visiting Professor at the Institute of Biotechnology, ETH Zurich and at the Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen.

Research Overview

Lipids assemble to form various phases with distinct structural and dynamic properties. This polymorphism plays important roles in areas as diverse as materials chemistry, membrane biology and biophysics. We have developed a novel concept for the solubilization, stabilization, and crystallization of membrane proteins within highly viscous, structured and optically transparent lipidic cubic phases (LCPs). This concept has contributed greatly to membrane biology, yielding structures of various membrane proteins, and culminating in the recent high-resolution structures of several G-protein-coupled receptors. Using a combination of molecular design, synthetic methodology, biophysical and colloidal chemistry, we are extending this concept to address fundamental and applied issues in lipid science. Specific topics in our current research are:

• Design and synthesis of lipids as building blocks of functional biomaterials
• Development of drug delivery and biosensor systems
• Development of lipidic matrices for functional and structural investigation of membrane proteins
• Prebiotic chemistry
• Fabrication of nanomaterials for biofuel cells