HYBRID: DNA Origami – Building tiny objects with the molecule of life

This lecture will be held at Magnus-Haus and can be followed online, too. Follow the links above to register your attendance in person on site or to receive login details for online attendance.

Topic: DNA nanotechnology allows for the bottom-up synthesis of nanometer-sized objects with high precision and selective addressability. The introduction of DNA origami in 2006 has allowed researchers to form hundreds of different nano-objects of varying shapes and sizes, many of which have also been site-specifically modified with different functional molecules incl. proteins or nanoparticles. In this talk, I will take you on a journey from DNA crystals to biomedical nanoagents. I will demonstrate how DNA origami can be used to decipher complex ligand-receptor interactions in cancer biology and how fossils inspired us to create super-stable DNA origami nanostructures through biomimetic chemistry.

CV: Amelie Heuer-Jungemann, born in 1987, is an independent research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, near Munich. She initially studied Chemistry before moving on to do a PhD in Physics at the University of Southampton, UK. She then moved back to Germany, to the LMU Munich, as a postdoc in soft matter biophysics. In 2020 she was awarded a prestigious Emmy Noether grant by the DFG and has been leading her own group since August 2020. Her group’s research interests are focused on using DNA origami and DNA origami-silica hybrid nanostructures for biomedical and materials applications, to study protein-protein interactions and to build enzymatic nanofactories.

Following the lecture, there will be a get-together where participants can exchange ideas with each other over pizza and drinks in the Remise and the garden of the Magnus-Haus.

The event is sponsored by the Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Foundation.