Sébastien LecommandouxCollège de FranceInnovation technologique Liliane Bettencourt (2024-2025)Année 2024-2025Colloque - Advancing Biomaterials: Biomimetic and Biohybrid InnovationsTimothy J. Deming : Enhancing biomimicry via polypeptide side-chain modificationsTimothy J. DemingProfesseur, UCLARésuméOur lab has pursued development of methods to allow selective incorporation of diverse functionality into synthetic polypeptide materials. Specifically, we have developed synthetic methods that allow a robust variety of modifications to nucleophilic thioether containing side-chains in both methionine and alkylated cysteine residues. Here we show such modifications can create synthetic polypeptides that can mimic environmentally responsive coacervate formation as has been observed in cytosolic proteins. We also show how modifications can be performed simultaneously on both segments of aqueous block copolymer assemblies resulting in materials that can respond to biologically relevant stimuli.Timothy J. DemingTimothy J. Deming received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Irvine in 1989, and graduated with a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1993. After a NIH postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst with David Tirrell, he joined the faculty in the Materials Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1995. Here he held appointments in the Materials and Chemistry Departments where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 1999 and Full Professor in 2003. His appointment is now as Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering and Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California Los Angeles. He served as the Chairman of the Bioengineering Department at UCLA from 2006 to 2011. He is a leader in the fields of polypeptide synthesis, self-assembly of block copolypeptides, and use of polypeptides in biology, for which he has received awards from the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, the Materials Research Society, and the IUPAC Macromolecular Division. He is also a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, and recently received the Fulbright-Tocqueville Distinguished Chair Award. Professor Deming has a long track record of training students for performing ethical, rigorous research and for organizing their data for presentations and publications. He is active in the bioinspired materials community, recently served as an Associate Editor for Biomacromolecules, and has been an Editorial Advisory Board member for Macromolecular Bioscience, Soft Matter, Macromolecules, and Biopolymers.

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