IMX Seminar Series - Amyloid Fibrils: Once Pathological Agents, Today Building Blocks for the Future

Protein fibrils are protein aggregates, which can be generated from food-grade proteins by unfolding and hydrolysis. The resulting protein fibrils can be used in a broad context of applications. At length scales above the well-established atomistic fingerprint of amyloid fibrils, these colloidal aggregates exhibit mesoscopic properties comparable to those of natural polyelectrolytes, yet with persistence lengths several orders of magnitude beyond the Debye length. This intrinsic rigidity, together with their chiral, polar and charged nature, provides these systems with some unique physical behavior. In this talk I will discuss our current understanding on the mesoscopic properties of amyloid fibrils at the single molecule level, the implication of their semiflexible nature on their liquid crystalline properties, and I will illustrate how this information prove useful in understanding their collective behavior in bulk and when adsorbed at liquid interfaces. By the careful exploitation of the physical properties of amyloid fibrils, the design of advanced materials with unprecedented physical properties become possible, and I will give a few examples on how these systems can ideally suit the design not only of complex food systems, but also of biosensors and biomaterials, catalytic and water purification membranes.

Bio: Raffaele Mezzenga received his PhD from EPFL Lausanne in 2001 and spent 2001-2002 as a postdoctoral scientist at University of California, Santa Barbara, working on the self-assembly of polymer colloids. In 2003 he moved to the Nestlé Research Center in Lausanne as research scientist, working on the self-assembly of surfactants, natural amphiphiles and lyotropic liquid crystals. In 2005 he was hired as Associate Professor in the Physics Department of the University of Fribourg, and he then joined ETH Zurich on 2009 as Full Professor. His research focuses on the fundamental understanding of self-assembly processes in polymers, lyotropic liquid crystals, food and biological colloidal systems. Prof. Mezzenga has been recipient of several national and international distinctions such as the 2011 AOCS Young Scientist Research Award, the 2013 Dillon Medal and the 2017 Fellowship of the American Physical Society, the Biomacromolecules/Macromolecules 2013 Young Investigator Award of the American Chemical Society, the 2004 Swiss Science National Foundation Professorship Award and the 2019 Spark Award for the most innovative 2019 ETH invention.