From psik-man-at-stfc.ac.uk Mon Nov 28 05:53:37 2011 Received: from engine19-1277-3.icritical.com (engine19-1277-3.icritical.com [93.95.13.95]) by physmail.rutgers.edu (8.13.8+Sun/8.13.8) with SMTP id pASArUKj011078 for ; Mon, 28 Nov 2011 05:53:36 -0500 (EST) Received: (qmail 6469 invoked from network); 28 Nov 2011 10:53:27 -0000 Received: from localhost (127.0.0.1) by engine19-1277-3.icritical.com with SMTP; 28 Nov 2011 10:53:27 -0000 Received: from engine19-1277-3.icritical.com ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (engine19-1277-3.icritical.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with SMTP id 06339-06 for ; Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:53:27 +0000 (GMT) Received: (qmail 2251 invoked by uid 599); 28 Nov 2011 10:46:10 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO EXCHHUB02.fed.cclrc.ac.uk) (193.62.124.100) by engine19-1277-3.icritical.com (qpsmtpd/0.28) with ESMTP; Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:46:10 +0000 Received: from cselnx9 (193.62.112.177) by EXCHHUB02.fed.cclrc.ac.uk (193.62.124.107) with Microsoft SMTP Server id 14.1.289.1; Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:46:10 +0000 Message-ID: <2962353.1322476881806.JavaMail.xyg-at-cselnx9> Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:41:21 +0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: PSI-K To: PSI-K Content-Type: text/html Received-SPF: None (EXCHHUB02.fed.cclrc.ac.uk: psik-coord-at-dl.ac.uk does not designate permitted sender hosts) X-Virus-Scanned: by iCritical at engine19-1277-3.icritical.com X-Spam-Checked: Spamassassin version 3.1.8, by Rutgers Physics X-Spam-Score: 2.7, tests=HTML_MESSAGE,HTML_MIME_NO_HTML_TAG,MIME_HTML_ONLY X-Spam-Confidence: ** X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.64 on 128.6.228.213 Subject: ** [ PSI-K ] PostDoc Position Multiscale modelling for DNA technologies Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 1 An announcement has been added in the "PSI-K" site at PSI-K (http://cselnx9.dl.ac.uk:8080/portal)

Subject: PostDoc Position Multiscale modelling for DNA technologies

Category: Job

From: LANDA Georges

Date: 28-Nov-2011 10:41

Message:

Multi-scale modelling for DNA nanotechnologies

Laboratoire d'Analyse et d'Architecture des Systèmes,

LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse, FRANCE

Nano-Engineering and System Integration group

contacts : Alain Esteve (aesteve-at-laas.fr)

Georges Landa (landa-at-laas.fr)

The Nano Engineering and System Integration group has extensive experience in the design and implementation of micro-and nano-objects for chemistry and biology, such as lab-on-chip where surface functionalization processes play an important role and has to be anticipated. In addition, the N2IS modeling team has strong expertise in the modeling of technological processes, and more generally in multi-scale simulation of complex systems.

The objective of this work is to accompany the LAAS experimental developments in DNA-based nanotechnologies. Two main directions are currently being considered :

(i) DNA-directed assembly of nanoparticles for nanoenergetic materials

The idea is to program the assembly of metal and metal oxide nanoparticles to produce advanced energetic materials. This can be achieved with DNA molecular recognition properties by playing with the strand complementarity of DNA-grafted nanoparticles.

One issue is to set up the functionalization protocols allowing for efficient grafting of DNA strands onto different metallic surfaces and their oxides. The possible chemical modifications of DNA and of the nanoparticle surfaces must be screened and understood on the side of experimental process optimizations.

(ii) Apatmer technologies for sensors

The aim of this proposal is to develop methods for modelling and studying different technological processes for designing a new generation of sensors based on aptamers. The project is partly dedicated to methodological developments in the general framework of multi-scale modelling and partly on the nano-surface engineering as seen in DNA-directed assembly work mentioned above.

Aptamers are small DNA sequences that are selected to specifically interact with a given target (non necessary biological).

The aptamer technologies face many issues, but the main one is to provide the understanding of aptamer properties persistence when in contact to surfaces or nanoobjects at the level of their integration into the functional sensor device. We propose to develop a modelling strategy to predict the variation of activity of an aptamer according to its grafting modes.

modelling the interaction of the free aptamer with the target molecule: to understand what conformations play a role in the interaction and the transition from one to the other ,
modelling of the grafted aptamer to predict the possible impact onto the aptamer folding, taking into account its chemical modification (addition of spacers and functional groups),
modelling the interaction of the grafted aptamer with the target molecule in a manner to envisage the global operating nanostructure.

To carry out this work, we will use :

DFT calculations to unravel the physico-chemitry of grafting,
A novel modelling approach developed in our team, namely the Static Mode method, that gives the deformation field of a molecule subject to an external excitation.

Attachments:
PostDoc_TRAIN2_LAAS.pdf

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