Prof. Ehud Gazit

The work in our group is focused on the molecular self-assembly of biological, bio-inspired and other organic building blocks. We use minimalistic approach to define the smallest molecular recognition and assembly modules and to understand the physicochemical basis for their association. We study the organization of biological systems in diverse fields including amyloid diseases, diabetes, virology and metabolic disorders. We identified the ability of very short peptides as well as metabolites to form typical amyloidal nano-fibrils. Our study of minimal recognition modules led to the discovery of a family of dipeptide nanostructures of various architectures including nanotubes, nanospheres, nanoplates, and hydrogel with nanoscale order with unique mechanical, optical, piezoelectrical and semiconductive properties. We recently extended our studies to peptide nucleic acids (PNA) converging the field of peptide nanotechnology and DNA nanotechnology.