Nanotechnology for Health: Innovative Designs for Medical Diagnosis (FutureLearn)
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Martin Bennink
I am an assistant professor nanobiophysics at the University of Twente, as well as chairing an applied research group in the field of nanobiotechnology at Saxion University of Applied Sciences.
My research work is focused on developing and exploiting methods for mechanical characterization of biomaterials at the nanometer (and larger) scale. Techniques that are used are atomic force microscopy and optical tweezers.
One particular biomaterial I am studying are protein amyloid fibrils. Atomic force microscopy imaging and mechanically characterizing alpha-synuclein fibers helps in unraveling its structure, i.e. the way that individual protein molecules are assembled to form the fibril. Measuring the mechanical properties at different length scales allows you to get a glimpse on how these mechanical properties of the individual molecules contribute through their hierarchicial structure to those of the larger structure. To this end we are attempting to perform bending tests on individual protein fibers using the atomic force microscope on one hand and perform nano-indentation experiments both on fibrils as well as on gels that are made from these fibers.
Another biomaterial of interest is collagen. We have been pioneers in developing micromechanical tensile test and bending experiments using atomic force microscopy in order to measure collagen fibrils. At the moment we are looking into the mechanical properties of individual collagen molecules, using AFM imaging as well as AFM-based single molecule force spectroscopy. By studying these and the mechanical properties of larger aggregates, such as the collagen fibril, we expect to get a better understanding of collagen works within our body.
Other activities involve the optical tweezers as a tool to perform force spectroscopy on single molecules, ranging from DNA, DNA-protein complexes and in the future hopefully towards stretching individual protein molecules.
More info here.