Awarded in 2024
Home Department: Chemical Engineering
Faculty Advisors: Polly Fordyce (Bioengineering, Genetics) and Alexander Dunn (Chemical Engineering)

Research Title: High-throughput microfluidic force spectroscopy for engineering protein mechanosensors

The ability of living cells to respond to mechanical cues is a critical aspect of development, immunology, cancer metastasis, and heart disease. The present understanding of how proteins respond to force is fundamentally limited by inefficient force spectroscopy methods. Matthew will develop a method for high-throughput single-molecule force spectroscopy (HT-SMFS) and use this technique to systematically screen mutations in a recently discovered force-sensitive PDZ domain-peptide interaction to understand how mechanosensitivity is encoded in protein interactions. HT-SMFS will elucidate how proteins function under force and uncover the design rules for engineering mechanosensitivity into proteins and therapeutics.