AMADEus Seminar - Prof. Takahiro Muraoka - Thursday 16 november 2017 - 11:00 am Auditorium Bât B - ENSCBP

Research Interest and Contents of Talk:
One of my major research interests is development of synthetic ion channels with capabilities of stimuli-responses and functioning in biological media. Among many synthetic ion channels developed since early 1980s, my original design is to build the channels by supramolecular assembly of rigid membrane-spanning components. This structural motif is inspired by nature, namely multipass transmembrane (MTM) proteins with assembled membrane-spanning alpha-helices. A multiblock amphiphile consisting of hydrophobic aromatic units and hydrophilic flexible PEG chains allows for folding to form an MTM-mimicked conformation in a lipid bilayer. This foldamer in a membrane performs ion transportation by the formation of a synthetic ion channel (ChemComm 2011, JACS 2012). More recently, the first totally synthetic ion channels responding to organic ligands and mechanical stress have been successfully demonstrated (JACS 2014 and 2017). During the researches relating to the ion channels, a multi-block amphiphilic macrocycle was synthesized, which shows thermo responsive single-crystal-to-single-crystal transition with macroscopic bending motion (Angew. Chem. 2014). X-ray crystallography revealed a thermoresponsive conformational change at the PEG chain triggers the polymorphism.

Short Biography:
Takahiro Muraoka is an Associate Professor (PI) at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology since 2017. He studied Chemistry and Biotechnology at the University of Tokyo, where he earned Ph.D. investigating molecular machines with interlocked movable units with Prof. Takuzo Aida in 2007.
After working as a JSPS postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Samuel I. Stupp group at Northwestern University, IL, USA, he was promoted to an Assistant Professor in Prof. Kazushi Kinbara’s group in Tohoku University in 2008 and moved to Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2015. His present research efforts concentrate on 1) synthetic supramolecular ion channels responding to ligand, 2) thermosalient and polymorphic single crystals, 3) structured monodispersed poly(ethylene glycol)s (PEGs) with protein-related functions, 4) photoresponsive self-assembling peptides, and 5) molecular machines.