(4ar) Emerging Applications of Molecular Programming in Biology and Nanotechnology

RNA and DNA are information-bearing polymers that underlie all life on Earth and that interact with one another predictably through Watson-Crick base pairing. Researchers have learned to exploit these interactions in a programmable way to establish molecular circuitry that can carry out many of the same operations as electronic circuits. They have also learned to construct nanometer scale structures with precisely defined sizes and shapes. These efforts in the field of molecular programming are opening up exciting new directions in biology and nanotechnology that I plan to explore as a faculty member. Since RNA and DNA, the basic tools of molecular programming, are also the information carriers of life, biomolecular networks composed of these polymers offer a powerful pathway through which to control the behavior of cells. I plan to develop sophisticated new nucleic acid based systems, such as riboregulators and riboswitches, to program the decision making of cells so that they can increase production rates of desired chemicals for metabolic engineering, and to better understand and enhance their behavior for synthetic biology. From the nanotechnology perspective, I plan to use nucleic acid structures as scaffolds that will enable us to position functional nanomaterials at precisely defined locations over micron scale areas. These efforts will make use of my combined expertise in self-assembly, nanofabrication, and biochemical separation processes. For example, I plan to assemble large area arrays of carbon nanotubes with well-defined electronic behavior. These nanotube arrays will have great potential as field effect transistors and transparent conductors composed solely of earth abundant materials. Furthermore, large scale assembly of metal nanoparticles will lead to plasmonically active structures with novel optical properties enabled through the controlled nanometer scale positioning afforded by nucleic acid scaffolds.

Biography. Alexander Green obtained his B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto in 2005. He then pursued graduate studies in Materials Science and Engineering from Northwestern University with Mark Hersam. At Northwestern, Dr. Green developed some of the first commercially scalable methods for producing carbon nanotubes and graphene with well-defined electronic and optical properties, and studied the performance of these novel materials in transparent conductors and thin film field-effect transistors. Since obtaining his PhD in 2010, Dr. Green has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard in the labs of Peng Yin and Jim Collins. There he has applied concepts from molecular programming to design programmable riboregulators of gene expression with unprecedented orthogonality and dynamic range. In addition, he has developed new methods for self-assembling RNA nanostructures with prescribed geometries, which have implications in siRNA delivery and metabolic engineering. Dr. Green has co-authored 50 peer-reviewed journal articles that have accumulated over 2800 citations. His h-index is 24 and several of his scientific discoveries have been successfully translated to industry.