Chemistry Colloquium: Dr. Takayuki Miki

The Department of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences is pleased to welcome Dr. Takayuki Miki, an Assistant Professor at The Tokyo Institute of Technology.
Title: Construction of Intracellular Protein Supramolecular Structures Using Self-Assembling Peptide Tags
Abstract
In living systems, proteins self-assemble into large bodys, which play fundamental roles. Especially, membraneless organelle draws attention from biochemical and cell biological communities. To mimic and artificially construct these assemblies in living cells, we exploited beta-sheet peptide tags to form artificial polymeric assemblies. In this concept, de novo peptides composed of alternative repeats of hydrophobic and hydrophilic amino acids are genetically fused to the protein of interest. The tag-fused protein expressed in cells spontaneously assembles to form polymeric clusters. Moreover, by modifying the tag sequence, we can easily tune the partition coefficient and the physical properties of the structures. I would like to talk about the potential of de novo-designed peptide tags for fabricating artificial protein condensates.