Nature has gifted us with remarkable living systems that can withstand extreme environments, perform intricate functions, and work collaboratively with other systems. Researchers are working to emulate nature’s “green” strategies for the production of new materials, devices, and therapies. Leading this effort is Dr. Francois Baneyx, of the University of Washington, who believes that “nothing beats the efficiency and economy of living systems.” While historically, his work has aimed to understand how proteins fold in the cell with a focus on the role of molecular chaperones, Dr. Baneyx and his team are now using these insights to dive deeper into the nascent field of bionanotechnology. For the last fifteen years, his group has investigated how proteins can be used to control the formation of complex inorganic structures that have extraordinary properties. Through a deepening understanding of such properties, Dr. Baneyx hopes to engineer materials and systems, inspired from nature’s designs, that will have an impact on medicine, electronics, physics, and more.

Dr. Baneyx’s research not only illuminates the exciting repertoire of tools that can be modeled after nature but has also helped to manufacture materials that are more efficient, cost effective, sustainable, and helpful. By engineering products from scratch, Dr. Baneyx and his team are able to harness the structure of a material in a way that helps people most. Dr. Baneyx argues that basic research is the most exciting thing a researcher can do because it gives the world the “ability to think about potential ways to apply fundamental knowledge to helping people.” As he and his team break new grounds, they also work towards applications that parallel the lab’s efforts. In fact, Dr. Baneyx’s latests projects have included the creation of nanovaccines, antibody-coated quantum dots, and the next generation of electronics components. In this way, he and his team are fostering creativity in order to make a difference for the future.

Current research includes:

• Solid-Binding Peptides: Dr. Baneyx uses combinatorial techniques to isolate small peptides that bind to materials of engineering interest and studies why and how they bind. By inserting these peptides within functional proteins, Dr. Baneyx and his team are fabricating useful products including antibody-coated quantum dots and nanovaccines that may revolutionize how diseases are diagnosed and therapeutics are manufactured.

• Complex Systems: Dr. Baneyx is exploring the use of chimaeric proteins to assemble and configure complex systems with nanoscale control of position. Such systems include what could be the electronics of the future and protonic circuits that will seamlessly interface with biology.

• Protein Scaffolds: Dr. Baneyx and his collaborators are using computation to design entirely new protein scaffolds in order to achieve exquisite control of inorganic binding and templating for applications in medicine and catalysis.