Building nanoscale devices with protein

Proteins are challenging to design but have the potential to be engineered to form sophisticated materials and smart drug.

Understanding natural nanomachines

Natural nanomachines including enzymes such as DNA gyrase are marvels of nature and may also be useful targets for therapeutic

Building nanoscale devices with DNA

DNA is not only the "blueprint for life" but is also a useful building material that we can design to build nanoscale structures and even programmable robots.

Bionanoscience and Biochemistry laboratory

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Natural Nanomachine Research

Understanding enzymes such as DNA gyrase will help us to build artificial versions and to design new drugs such as antibiotics.

Protein Nanoscience Research

Designing and building new protein superstructures will allow new kinds of drug delivery system and ultimately, new kinds of nanoscale biological machines to be constructed.

DNA Nanoscience Research (FNP TEAM Project)

We are trying to build designed, programmable DNA structures using the DNA origami technique.

Latest News

13 May/2022

New paper show how a tiny change can have a big impact on artificial protein nanostructures

We have shown that they can cause a nano-sized spherical protein cage to undergo a major change in shape simply by changing a single amino acid. The work is interesting as it provides insight into how artificial protein containers can be engineered and molded into different shapes for different applications. It also is of interest […]

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16 Apr/2022

New paper on mathematics of protein assembly

We are happy to share our new paper on the mathematics of the how not-quite-regular artificial protein cages can form. Thanks to a great collaboration with Bernard Piette at University of Durham. And well-done to PhD student Agnieszka Kowalczyk. We also got the cover! Check out the paper: Characterization of near-missconnectivity-invariant homogeneous convex polyhedral cages […]

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10 Mar/2022

New work uses artificial protein cage to arrange gold nanoparticles in 3D pattern

In our new work we showed that in certain conditions, mixing modified TRAP ring-shaped protein with small (1-3 nm) gold nanoparticles resulted in an unusual protein cage made from twelve protein rings arranged in a way similar to a dodecahedron. Interestingly, the gaps at the “corners” of the shape were filled with individual gold nanoparticles […]

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2 Mar/2022

Work on programmable phage capsids makes a featured image

Happy that our work showing that we can control the size of a bacteriophage protein “nanocontainer” is the featured image at Nature’s Communications Materials. Thanks to artist Elfy Chiang for her great work. Check out the paper here.

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16 Feb/2022

DNA Topogami work makes the journal cover

On the cover of ACS Nanoscience Au! Illustrating the concept of our DNA Topogami paper. Congrats to the whole team especially Gerrit Wilkens who was not only the first author along with Yusuke Sakai but also single-handedly made the cover image.

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11 Feb/2022

New paper published: controlling the size of a virus-like particle

In our recent paper in Communications Materials we showed that we could control the diameter of bacteriophage MS2 VLP by adding amino acids to an external loop sequence. We used cryoEM to determine the resulting structures which had different symmetries to the “normal” T=3 particle. Thanks to a great collaboration with Reidun Twarock and Farzad […]

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Our Projects

We are very grateful to our funders including the Foundation for Polish Science, The National Science Centre and Una Europa. For more about the individual projects and funding. See our projects page.

About us

A bright amibtious team working on cutting-edge science across disciplines

We are an ambitious lab. Individual researchers work on a variety of topics and with a wide range of expertise. We are always learning from each other and work together as a team.


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Bionano and Biochemistry Lab
(Heddle Lab)

Contacts

Bionanoscience and Biochemistry laboratory

Malopolska Centre of Biotechnology,
Jagiellonian University,

Gronostajowa 7A,
Krakow 30-387, Poland

© Jonathan Heddle / Bionanoscience and Biochemistry laboratory

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