Laboratory of Biophysical Chemistry

Description of the Group

Our field of interests consists of three areas in which chemistry, biology and physics are interwoven:

1. Biological “Soft Matter”, especially relations between structure of biopolymers and their macroscopic properties. Application of physicochemically modified proteins as new bionanomaterials.
2. Physicochemical and molecular foundations of conformational diseases, aggregation and amyloidogenesis of proteins; problem of unambiguity in coding of structural information in propagation of amyloid; exotic beta-sheet structures.
3. Non-Anfinsenian behavior of proteins: memory effect and chiral bifurcation as highly non-equilibrium processes, accompanying incorrect folding of polypeptides and proteins.

Research Activities

The research conducted in the Laboratory of the Group of Biophysical Chemistry is focused on cross-roads of chemistry, biology and physics, namely:

1. biological “soft matter”: the relationship between the structure and dynamics of biopolymers (especially proteins) and their macroscopic physicochemical properties, as well as applications of physico-chemi-cally modified proteins as new functional bionanoma-terials;
2. physicochemical and molecular basis of conforma-tional diseases, aggregation and amyloidogenesis of proteins; the problem of unequivocal encoding of structural information upon amyloid propagation; exotic beta-card structures;
3. non-Anfinsenian behavior of proteins: the conforma-tion memory effect and the phenomenon of chiral bifurcation as examples of highly far-from-equilibrium processes accompanying misfolding of polypeptides and proteins;
4. Applications of optical spectroscopy (in particular vibrational spectroscopy and electronic circular dichroism) to study structural transitions of biomac-romolecules.

Offer

• Studies on thermodynamic stability and amyloidogenic properties of recombinant proteins
• Study of secondary structures of proteins by circular dichroism

Team Leader

Professor Wojciech Dzwolak – graduate of the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Warsaw (1996 – MSc) and the University of Ritsumeikan in Kyoto (2000) – PhD). Author of over 60 papers in the field of biophysics and physical chemistry of proteins (index H=21). Laureate of, among others, the 2008 Faculty III Awards of the Polish Academy of Sciences; leader and participant in a number of national and international research projects.

The research conducted by Wojciech Dzwolak (also in cooperation with leading research hubs in Japan, Germany and the USA) focuses on the broadly understood problem of thermodynamic control of self-organizing non-native biopolymer structures