Seung-Wuk Lee

Assistant Professor, Bioengineering Faculty Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Core Member, UCB/UCSF Graduate Group in Bioengineering 220 Donner Lab mailcode: (510) 486-4628 fax: 510-486-6488 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it http://leelab.berkeley.edu Membership effective July 2007

Research Interests

We are interested in bio-inspired nanomaterials and nanotechnology. We are developing new ways to fabricate high performance materials and devices through self-assembly processes by exploiting biological organisms such as viruses and cells. We are also designing synthetic viruses which can be exploited as regenerative tissue engineering materials and drug delivery vehicles.
  

Research Summary

A fundamental challenge in nanoscience is to accomplish two “complementary” goals simultaneously: One is synthesis of high performance functional materials on nanometer scale and the other is their assembly into well-defined structures which can surpass current lithographic capabilities. To achieve these goals, our research group is developing novel basic building blocks which store blueprint information about both their specific functions and the direction of their self-assembly structures using “evolutionary peptides” conjugated to programmable structural motifs.  The resulting nano-structures fabricated with the proposed basic building blocks can be coupled to conventional devices such as data storage media, wave-guide materials, or sensory devices to enhance integrity or efficiency of opto-electronic devices currently fabricated by “top-down” approaches. We are currently developing the following projects that integrate diverse scientific disciplines including molecular biology, inorganic/organic chemistry, materials science, and electrical engineering: Small molecule basic building blocks with functional peptide motifs; Polymeric matrices as platforms to build periodic nanostructures; Viruses as an active building block to self-assemble functional materials; Fabrication of viral regenerative tissue scaffolds.

Selected Publications

1.    Lee, S.-W.; Mao, C.; Flynn, E. C.; Belcher, A. M. Ordering of Quantum Dots Using Genetically Engineered Viruses. Science 2002, 296, 892-895.

2.    Merzlyak, A.; Lee, S.-W., “Phage as Templates for Hybrid Materials and Mediators for Nanomaterial Synthesis”, Current Opinion in Chemical Biology, 2006 10, 246-252.

3.    Jaworski, J; Raorane, D.; Huh, J.; Majumdar, A.; Lee, S.-W.; Evolutionary Screening of Biomimetic Coatings for Selective Detection of Explosives. Langmuir, 2008, 28, 4938-4943.

4.    Kwon, K.-Y.; Wang, E., Chung, A,; Chiang N.; Saiz, E.; Koobastian, M.;Choi, W.; Lee, S.-W.; Defect Induced Asymmetric Pit Formation on Hydroxyapatite, Langmuir, 2008, 28, 11063-11066.

5.    Merzlyak, A.; Lee, S.-W., “Genetically Engineered Liquid Crystalline Virus Matrices For Tissue Regenerating Materials”, Nano Letters, 2009, in press (10.1021/nl8036728)