Achievement

IGERT Fellow, Lauren Willis and IGERT advisor Dr. Marjia Drndic engaged in interdisciplinary research to publish a highly regarded paper in the peer-reviewed journal Science, titled "Computational Design of Virus-Like Protein Assemblies on Carbon Nanotube Surfaces". This paper explores new ways to help choosing self-assembling proteins through designing proteins that could wrap around single-walled carbon nanotubes in order to achieve a specific geometric pattern of the atomes that the proteins are composed of.

Lauren's contributions included using high resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to image gold particles attached to peptides wrapped around individual single wall nantubes (SWNTs), which allowed quantitative analysis of particle spacing and configuration to confirm the computational model of the complex.