Thorsten Schmidt
Kent State University at Kent, OH·Biophysics
Membrane proteins sit in the oily membranes around and inside every cell. They move water, salts and nutrients across membranes, sense the cell's surroundings, carry messages between cells and convert energy.
- Fields
Biophysics
Biochemistry
Chemistry
- Topics
membrane proteins
DNA nanotechnology
DNA origami
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Build ring-shaped DNA nanostructures that self-assemble from synthetic DNA strands and can be filled with lipids and membrane proteins, making the proteins water-soluble in a membrane-like setting.
- Use the programmable chemistry of DNA to control the size and physical and chemical properties of DNA-lipid nanodiscs, tailoring them to each membrane protein's needs.
- Apply DNA-lipid nanodiscs to help solve structures of small membrane proteins and of mechanosensitive membrane proteins, which respond to forces in cell membranes.
More about the research
About 60% of approved drugs act on them. Designing drugs well requires knowing a protein's exact 3D structure. However, membrane proteins do not dissolve in water, which makes their structures hard to solve. Fewer than 100 of roughly 8,000 human membrane proteins have known structures.
Why it matters
Membrane proteins are involved in many physiological and infectious diseases and are the targets of most approved drugs. Tools that make their structures easier to solve could help researchers understand how these proteins work in disease. They could also help pharmacologists and virologists model how candidate drugs bind, supporting better treatment of membrane protein-associated diseases.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Dominik Konkolewicz
Miami University-Oxford, OH·Chemistry
Synthesize a new class of polymers using controlled polymerization to tune chain length, charge and hydrophobicity, and test which designs self-assemble with lipids into well-defined discs tens of nanometers across.
Diana Goncalves Schmidt
Kent State University at Kent, OH·Biophysics·Early-career
Optimize the production of DNA origami barcodes, folded DNA nanostructures carrying programmable nanocrystal patterns and fluorescent labels, and characterize them with gel electrophoresis, fluorometry and electron microscopy.
Moitrayee Bhattacharyya
Yale University, CT·Biochemistry
Develop a pipeline using styrene-maleic acid copolymers to extract membrane proteins as ~10–15 nm "native nanodiscs" that keep their surrounding native lipids and partner proteins, followed by enrichment and purification.
The school
Kent State University at Kent: 6 labs on PI Pages, $61M a year on research, 162 research doctorates a year.
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