Seminar Report

Title: Engineering Organisms to Grow Unique Materials for Energy

Speaker: Dr. Angela Belcher, MIT
Date: April 3, 2013 @ MIT Club, California

1. Keywords
nanosynthesis, M13 bacteriophage, biotemplating, cathode materials, SWCNT

2. Problem(s) studied by speaker:

I. Using genetic information to non-living structures to exploit their exceptional properties.
II. How modified bacteriophages interact with sythetically important reactants to form artificial
materials.
III. Usage of biotemplates to produce materials which are more difficult to synthesize otherwise.

3. Prior work on topic:

I. Organic protein sequence matrixes nucleate the correct crystal structure in the aragonite material was
already known.
II. DNA sequencing for the M13 bacteriophage had already been a well developed technique.
III. Layer by layer assembly method had already been developed by Paula Hammond’s group.

4. Speaker’s accomplishments:
I. Development of efficient screening technique to identify proteins that have the affinity for desired
material synthesis.
II. Development of yeasts to generate materials for photocatalysis, cancer treatment, tile development
from flue gas etc.
III. Synthesis of virus based single crystal quantum dot nanowires of zinc and cadmium sulphide.
IV. Developed reducing agent based facile conversion technique from gold ions to gold nanowires at
98% efficiency.

5. How speakers work differs from or related to previously published work:

I. Was able to grow simultaineously two materials that are typically difficult to grow together by using
the correct protein sequence on virus for first time.
II. Development of virus based hybrid anode with increased capacity and reaction rate, using Au-Co3O4
nanowires.
III. Engineering viruses to pick up SWCNT by one end by genetically modifying their peptides, this
produced high power lithium ion battery cathodes.
IV. Utillization of M13 virus as a surfactant for CNT keeping them soluble.

6. Future directions (2 senten.)

I. Development of catalysts through biotemplating techniques developed which is otherwise difficult.
II. Developing techniques to excise sub-milimeter tumors using SWNT guidance.