Biomolecular Self-Assembly
Our aim is to develop novel functional supramolecular materials. Our group designs and synthesizes relatively simple organic molecules endowed with suitable functional groups to undergo self-assembly. We generally use the self-assembly process through non-covalent interaction to achieve the desired materials. We study and analyze the self-assembly and self-organization of supramolecular probes having different morphologies under several conditions like concentration, temperature, solvents, etc. Peptide-based supramolecular architectures have drawn significant attention due to their unique properties compared to conventional materials. Several supramolecular architectures have been developed in our laboratory with potential biomedical applications. By changing the self-assembly parameters, we can construct several supramolecular architectures with morphological individualities. We have also been working on self-assembling short peptides with different metal ions to develop metallo-peptide-based superstructures. This concept of developing metallo-peptide is inspired by the fact that most of enzyme has metal ions in its active sites, which is responsible for its enzymatic activity.
Design and Development of drug delivery vehicles and bio-imaging probes
We are primarlity involved in the development of short peptides (di, tri, tetra and penta) and Liposome based self-assembled superstructure to employ them as drug delivery vehicles and bioimaging probes. We have also developed short peptides based nanostructures with intrinsic fluorescent properties which allowed to monitor the drug release without any additional imaging probe.
Design and Development of Peptide based smart antimicrobial materials
Our aim is to design and develop short peptide-based supramolecular architectures that can form smart functional coating which can resist the biofilm formation. This smart coating can resist the adherence of various microorganisms like bacteria, fungi and viruses. This peptide-based antimicrobial coating can be applied to several biomedical implants and daily usable surfaces to avoid the spread of these microorganisms-infected disease.
Bio molecular recognition
The supramolecular morphologies can exhibit enhanced optical properties compared to the isolated building block. For new supramolecular morphologies, we seek to gain control over their structural and functional properties to exploit them for different applications by better understanding. Currently, we are exploring the optical properties of supramolecular probes under different self-assembly conditions by tuning the several influential parameters like solvent, pH, temperature etc… The investigation is directed to optimize the properties of the systems that can be implemented to produce optoelectronic devices, biosensing platforms, and meany other bioanalytical applications.
