Faculty DirectoryNeha Kamat
Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and (by courtesy) Chemical and Biological Engineering
Contact
2233 Tech DriveMudd 5110
Evanston, IL 60208-3109
847-467-2671Email Neha Kamat
Website
Centers
Departments
Affiliations
PhD Program in Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences
Education
NASA Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA
Ph.D. Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
B.S. Bioengineering, Rice University, Houston, TX
Research Interests
Engineered Membranes, Artificial Cells, Membrane Biophysics, Polymersomes, Biomaterials
Our interests lie in constructing minimal systems, or artificial cells, as a tool to understand and recreate certain cellular behaviors. We are specifically interested in designing mechanically responsive systems that can optically or enzymatically report membrane stress in biological and polymeric environments. By using emerging engineering methods in material science and synthetic biology, we aim to construct macromolecular assemblies that can coordinate both membrane biophysical processes and RNA-regulated chemical processes in order to continuously sense and respond to designed stimuli for medicinal and technological applications.
Our research activities are focused into three areas: (1) designing active interfaces by incorporating membrane proteins into synthetic bilayer membranes (2) designing optical sensors that report membrane tension and stress and (3) engineering compartments that can engage encapsulated reactions based on environmental stimuli. These research areas all utilize self-assembled bilayers as a material scaffold. They advance our understanding of membrane biophysics as well as enable technologies for the design of adaptive and responsive biomaterials.
Selected Publications
Peruzzi, J. A.; Steinkühler, J.; Vu, T. Q.; Gunnels, T. F.; Lu, P.; Baker, D.; Kamat, N. P. Hydrophobic mismatch drives self-organization of designer proteins into synthetic membranes. bioRxiv [Preprint]. 2023. DOI: 10.1101/2022.06.01.494374 Nature Communications, accepted
Steinkühler, J.; Peruzzi, J.A.; Krüger, A.; Jacobs, M. L.; Jewett, M. C.; Kamat, N. P. Improving cell-free expression of membrane proteins by tuning ribosome co-translational membrane association and nascent chain aggregation. bioRxiv [Preprint] 2023. DOI: 10.1101/2023.02.10.527944 ACS Synthetic Biology 2023 accepted
Peruzzi, J.A.; Vu, T.Q.; Gunnels, T.F.; Kamat, N.P. Rapid Generation of Therapeutic Nanoparticles Using Cell-Free Expression Systems. Small Methods 2023 in press DOI:10.1002/smtd.202201718
Peruzzi, J. A.; Galvez, N. R.; Kamat, N. P. Engineering transmembrane signal transduction in synthetic membranes using two-component systems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2023, 120, e2218610120
Vu, T. Q.; Peruzzi, J. A. ; Sant’Anna, L. E.; Kamat, N. P. Lipid phase separation in vesicles enhances TRAIL-mediated cytotoxicity. Nano Letters 2022, 22, 2627-2634
Boyd, M. A.; Kamat, N. P. Designing artificial cells towards a new generation of biosensors. Trends in Biotechnology 2021, 39, 927-939
Peruzzi, J. A.; Jacobs, M. L.; Wang, K. S.; Kamat, N. P. Barcoding Biological Reactions with DNA-Functionalized Vesicles. Angewandte Chemie International Edition 2019 in press DOI:10.1002/anie.201911544
Jacobs, M. J.; Boyd, M. A.; Kamat, N. P.; Diblock copolymers enhance folding of a mechanosensitive membrane protein during cell-free expression. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2019, 10, 4031-4036
Patents
1. Daniel A Hammer, Ivan Julian Dmochowski, Gregory Patrick Robbins, Masaya S Jimbo, Michael J Therien, and Neha P Kamat. Polymer Vesicles for Selective Electromagnetic Energy-Induced Delivery. US Patent App. 12/548, 801.