Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Proteins are biological nanomachines that accomplish critical functions in all lifeforms. Their ability to carry out chemical reactions under mild conditions and recognize other molecules with extremely high specificity makes their use attractive in sustainable industry and medicine. However, despite their common use in liquid environments, the mechanisms of protein interaction with solid elements are poorly understood. Moreover, common tools that investigate protein structural elements perform poorly at solid interfaces, limiting our capacity to build this understanding. This gap in modern knowledge limits the usability of these useful molecules in many highly relevant applications that rely upon protein-solid interaction, such as plastic recycling and the biomedical monitoring of chronic illnesses. Dr. Adam Damry's research program addresses these barriers through the application of cutting-edge synthetic biology methods that probe protein function. Synthetic biology directs engineering principles towards biological problems with the aim of redesigning natural biological systems to create new technologies. Using these techniques, Dr. Damry and his team will create protein-based tools to sustainably degrade and recycle highly-polluting waste plastics, develop cleaner bioindustrial processes, and design biomedical devices for the personalized treatment of chronic illnesses such as diabetes and cancer – all of which depend on protein-solid interactions. Along the way, they will learn elements describing how the protein-solid interface behaves and create methods that are tailored to harnessing and understanding proteins in this unique space. The methods they develop will be used in an iterative 'design and learn' process, where these novel methods will be used to create increasingly complex biological tools whose study in turn drives further methodological improvement. Overall, this work will advance our fundamental understanding of proteins, further enabling our capacity to harness these useful natural workhorses for societal and technological development and allowing the development of industrial and medical tools to protect the wellbeing of the Canadian people, environment, and economy.