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Fred Kavli Distinguished Lectureship in Nanoscience

View a report and photos from this event from The Meeting Scene.

The Kavli Foundation supports scientific research, honors scientific achievement, and promotes public understanding of scientists and their work. Its particular focuses are astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience. For more information about the Foundation, visit their Web site at http://www.kavlifoundation.org/

Chad A. Mirkin (View Bio) Northwestern University Talk Presentation: The Polyvalent Gold Nanoparticle Conjugate—Materials Synthesis, BioDiagnostics, and Intracellular Gene Regulation (View Abstract)

Biography

Dr. Chad A. Mirkin is the Director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology, the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Professor of Materials Science & Engineering, and Professor of Medicine. Mirkin holds a BS degree from Dickinson College (1986, elected into Phi Beta Kappa) and a PhD degree in chemistry from the Pennsylvania State University (1989). He was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, prior to becoming a chemistry professor at Northwestern University in 1991.

A chemist and a world-renowned nanoscience expert, Mirkin is known for his development of the polyvalent nanoparticle conjugate, nanoparticle-based biodetection schemes, the invention of Dip-Pen Nanolithography, and contributions to supramolecular chemistry. The author of over 390 manuscripts and over 350 patents and applications, Mirkin is also the founder of three companies, Nanosphere, NanoInk, and AuraSense, which are commercializing nanotechnology applications in the life science and semiconductor industries. At present, he is listed as the most cited chemist in the world (Thomson Reuters), and the most cited nanomedicine researcher in the world (Nanomedicine Registry).

Mirkin has been recognized for his accomplishments with over 50 national and international awards. These include the $500,000 MIT Lemelson Prize, the Havinga Medal, the Gustavus John Esselen Award, the Biomedical Engineering Society's Distinguished Achievement Award, a Department of Defense NSSEFF Award, and the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2002, 2004), to name just a few. He is a Member of the President’s Council of Science & Technology (PCAST, Obama Administration) and the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Mirkin has served on the editorial advisory boards of over twenty scholarly journals. At present, he is a member of the editorial advisory boards of Journal of the American Chemical Society, Accounts of Chemical Research, Angewandte Chemie, Advanced Materials, BioMacromolecules, Macromolecular Bioscience, SENSORS, Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Chemistry-A European Journal, Chemistry & Biology, Nanotechnology Law & Business, The Scientist, Journal of Materials Chemistry, and Journal of Cluster Science, Plasmonics. He is the founding editor of the journal Small, one of the premier international nanotechnology journals, and he has co-edited two bestselling books on nanobiotechnology.

Abstract

Over the past decade, we have developed methods for modifying nanoparticles with oligonucleotides and explored how they can be used as designer constructs for preparing highly ordered, highly functional materials.  Some of these structures are crystalline and have lattice parameters which are tailorable by virtue of nanoparticle and DNA synthon.  Over the course of these studies, we have discovered many unusual fundamental properties that make these materials particularly useful in biodiagnostics and intracellular gene regulation. This seminar will focus on the rules that govern the use of these conjugates and sequence specific crystallization, high selectivity and sensitivity nucleic acid and protein detection, and “antisense” therapy. Specifically, we will introduce the concept of the “antisense particle”, as well as similarly functionalized siRNA particles, which exhibit a range of unique properties that make them very well-suited for gene regulation. In particular, the particles are highly resistant to nuclease digestion, have high and tailorable binding constants for target mRNA, and exhibit high entry efficiency into multiple cell types. Further, we can tailor the chemistry on the nanoparticle surface, and thus control the particles’ binding strength to complementary target sequences, ultimately demonstrating that changing the binding strength or surface chemistries offers a means to control the degree of protein expression.