The Mrksich Group

 

We pioneered the development of MegaMolecules – a new way to engineer protein-based molecules with much greater control over their structure and complexity than with traditional techniques. With this approach, we can build structures composed of more than twenty protein domains, with branched, cyclic and dendritic architectures, and with molecular weights in excess of a million Daltons, for a broad range of basic and applied applications, with an emphasis on biomedical applications such as antibody mimics.

 

In another program, we emphasize the development of methods to perform high throughput experiments by combining engineered surfaces and mass spectrometry in a technique known as SAMDI-MS. This method has been used extensively to profile enzymatic activity both in situ and in complex lysates while permitting the analysis of tens of thousands of experiments in a day.