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Siyuan Zhou

Siyuan joined the group as KURF student 2022 studying Biochemistry BSc at King’s, after come back from a exchange year at Hopkins, he finished his final year on the project ‘De novo Design of Ion Channels from α-Helical Barrels ‘ and continues his PhD on De novo protein channel design research as a BBSRC LIDo project student. Outside lab he is a reptile keeper and scuba diver.

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α-helical peptide channels. Despite advances in peptide and protein design, the rational design of membrane-spanning peptides that form conducting channels remains challenging due to our imperfect understanding of the sequence-to-structure relationships that drive membrane insertion, assembly, and conductance. Here, we describe the design and computational and experimental characterization of a series of coiled coil-based peptides that form transmembrane α-helical barrels.

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Adelina Krusteva

Adelina’s journey began during an industrial placement year at Ipsen, where she gained hands-on experience in protein engineering working with Botulinum toxins. After completing her BSc at King’s, she joined the Wallace lab to continue work on the translocation mechanism of BoNT. Outside the lab, she is a painter and a practitioner of BJJ and Muay Thai—pursuing these passions when inspiration and energy align.

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Spatial light modulation for interferometric scattering microscopy . Interferometric scattering (iSCAT) microscopy enables high-speed and label-free detection of individual molecules and small nanoparticles. Here we apply point spread function engineering to provide adaptive control of iSCAT images using spatial light modulation. With this approach, we demonstrate improved dynamic spatial filtering, real-time background subtraction, focus control, and signal modulation based on sample orientation.

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Real-time label-free imaging of living crystallization-driven self-assembly. The living crystallization-driven self-assembly (CDSA) of semicrystalline block copoly- mers is a powerful method for the bottom-up construction of uniform polymer mi- crostructures with complex hierarchies. Improving our ability to engineer such complex particles demands a better understanding of precisely how to control the self-assembly process. Here, we apply interferometric scattering microscopy (iSCAT) to deliver real- time observation of individual poly(ε-caprolactone)-based platelet growth. This label-free method enables us to map the role of key reaction parameters on platelet growth rate, size, and morphology. Furthermore, iSCAT provides a contrast mechanism for studying multi-layer platelets, offering new insights into the distribution of polymer compositions within a single platelet.

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Henry Chippindale Henry joins the group following a BSc in Biology at the University of Nottingham and a Systems and Synthetic Biology MRes from Imperial.

Henry is working on building de novo artifical synapses linking real cells and artificial cells.

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Monitoring AuNP growth. Methods capable of controlling synthesis at the level of an individual nanoparticle are a key step towards improved reproducibility and scalability in engineering complex nanomaterials. To address this we combine spatially-patterned activation of the photoreductant sodium pyruvate with interferometric scattering microscopy to achieve fast, label-free monitoring and control of hundreds of gold nanoparticles in real-time. Individual particle growth kinetics are well-described by two-step nucleation autocatalysis model, but with a distribution of individual rate constants that changes with reaction conditions.