Negative noodles, and positive ones too: Engineering intrinsically disordered proteins

Benjamin Schuster, Ph.D. 
Assistant Professor 
Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
Rutgers University–New Brunswick

Seminar Abstract

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) do not fold into a fixed three dimensional structure. Nevertheless, they play important roles in health and disease, and they are an exciting target for biotechnology applications. Some IDPs can be thought of as spaghetti-like proteins, or as protein analogues of synthetic polymers, and exhibit rich phase behavior that is closely coupled to their function. In this talk, I will describe several recent discoveries from my lab along with our academic and industrial collaborators. First, I will present our work on leveraging IDPs as a tool for bioseparations and biocatalysis in pharmaceutical manufacturing. Second, I will discuss our efforts to decipher the molecular language governing phase behavior and rheology of IDPs. Third, I will highlight our work on surfactant proteins engineered from IDPs. Together, this work demonstrates the opportunity for discovery at the intersection of protein engineering and polymer science, with impacts from fundamental biophysics to biotechnology and biomedicine

Biography: Benjamin Schuster's research group studies and engineers protein phase separation, with applications in biotechnology and in understanding human disease. His lab utilizes approaches from protein engineering, bio/nanomaterials, and biophysics. He started at Rutgers in January 2019 after completing his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania in the lab of Daniel Hammer. He received his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in the lab of Justin Hanes and his undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota, where his undergraduate advisor was David Odde. Schuster is the recipient of a MIRA award from the National Institutes of Health and recently received an NSF CAREER award.