Welcome to The Merg Lab!
Research within the Merg Lab focuses on the design and fabrication of nanoscale materials derived from the self-assembly of sequence-programmable biomolecules (e.g., peptides, proteins, and nucleic acids). Developing these supramolecular architectures with hierarchical physical and chemical control across length-scales (an outstanding challenge within the field of biomolecular self-assembly), is a critical step towards the deployment of these materials for a variety of biomedical and bioengineering applications (e.g., biosensors, drug delivery, catalysis, etc.). The Merg Lab is highly interdisciplinary with research interests spanning the fields of peptide chemistry, materials chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, materials science, and bioengineering.
Recent Publications
- Coiled Coil Peptide Tiles: Expanding the Peptide Building Block Design with Multivalent Peptide Macrocycles
- Interhelical E@g-N@a Interactions Modulate Coiled Coil Stability within a De Novo Set of Orthogonal Peptide Heterodimers
- Structural biases in disordered proteins are prevalent in the cell
- Shape-Shifting Peptide Nanomaterials: Surface Asymmetry Enables pH-Dependent Formation and Interconversion of Collagen Tubes and Sheets
- 2D Crystal Engineering of Nanosheets Assembled from Helical Peptide Building Blocks
- Seeded Heteroepitaxial Growth of Crystallizable Collagen Triple Helices: Engineering Multifunctional Two-Dimensional Core-Shell Nanostructures