PostDoc at Erb Lab, science policy enthusiast, scientific illustrator, metalhead. Yay to using ML, physics and molecular biology to engineer new synbio systems
Elisabeth Bobkova
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Big thanks to everyone at Erb and Hummer lab, to all collaborators for the support throughout this project and to everyone at @mpimicrobiomarburg.bsky.social ๐ 7/7
Overall, this establishes a modular nanopore engineering toolbox, including a โone-potโ modification and screening strategy for systematically tuning and probing diffusion in synthetic membrane systems. 6/7
A key challenge in synbio is that selectively permeable synthetic membranes are difficult to build and difficult to measure reliably. Modified membrane protein insertion is often variable, and most diffusion assays suffer from low throughput, instability, or hidden biases from vesicle breakage. 2/7
Very happy to share my first preprint from my PhD ๐
doi.org/10.64898/202...
We develop an ฮฑHL-based framework to engineer and quantify selective diffusion across synthetic membranes using controlled nanopore chemistry. 1/7
We use ฮฑ-Hemolysin (ฮฑHL) as a self-inserting scaffold to reduce variability in membrane insertion. By employing site-specific cysteine mutations we enable controlled chemical modification pre- and post-insertion, helping decouple pore design from batch-to-batch and folding-related effects. 3/7
We show a LUV-based nanoluc assay, providing a robust and unbiased readout of peptide diffusion. We directly visualize the large contribution that vesicle breakage has on measured diffusion signal in non-stabilized synthetic membranes โ a critical factor that is often underestimated in studies. 4/7
Using this setup, we show that chemical modification of of ฮฑHL post-insertion significantly changes peptide permeability and selectivity depending on modification site and reporter structure and charge. 5/7
Really enjoyed the 77th #MosbacherKolloquium ! Thanks to the organizers @gbmev.bsky.social for putting together such an amazing program and for giving me the chance to present my poster. To quote Andrรฉ Nadler: Membranes are great, science is great, and let's continue making discoveries! ;)
Just realized, that I have never posted my artwork on bluesky! So here are some of my favorite pieces I got to create during my PhD for different projects from @mpimicrobiomarburg.bsky.social What a journey it has been :)
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