Project Grant 2453602
- The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), through its Mathematical and Physical Sciences Federal Grant Program (CFDA 47.049), awarded a $602,976 project grant to Scripps Research Institute to study the emergence of homochirality in the synthesis of biological polymers. The research, led by Professor Donna G. Blackmond, aims to understand how exclusively homochiral (single-handed) biological polymers, such as proteins and nucleic acids, evolved from chiral building blocks. This work will...
- Under this $200,000 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation Division of Chemistry's Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049), the New Jersey Institute of Technology will collaborate with the University of Rochester and University of Virginia to investigate the supramolecular assembly of beta-sheet nanofibrils composed of mirror-image peptides. The collaborative team will determine the structure of these systems with near-atomic precision using cryo-electron...
- This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) will investigate the torsional piezoelectric properties of chiral (asymmetric) biological molecules. The $299,963 award will fund a two-year study to explore how chiral solids can generate voltage when twisted and twist in response to an applied voltage, with potential applications in power generation and microscopic motors. The project will study both left-...
- This $360,000 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) supports collaborative research by professors Eriks Rozners of SUNY at Binghamton and James A. Mackay of Elizabethtown College. The project aims to develop new peptide nucleic acid (PNA) molecules capable of selectively recognizing and binding to double-stranded non-coding RNA. This research addresses an important challenge in RNA biochemistry and could enable...
- This $480,000 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) supports the development of novel approaches for assembling three-dimensional protein biomaterials. The primary goal is to create "coordinated protein frameworks" (CPFs) - extended protein lattices with defined geometries and tunable distances between the assembled proteins. This work leverages non-canonical amino acids to precisely control the...
- This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Division of Chemistry under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program supports a collaborative research effort led by Emory University and the University of Illinois Chicago to design and develop peptide-based filamentous nanomaterials. The $300,000 award, effective from August 1, 2024 to July 31, 2027, will leverage computational methods to systematically explore the energetics and structural designability of...
- This $232,771 Project Grant, awarded on September 15, 2025, was provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program. The grant aims to develop computational mathematical tools to better understand protein structures and interactions, even across a wide range of mutations. This interdisciplinary research combines mathematical modeling, machine learning, and biology to analyze the complex shapes of proteins, with the goal of enabling...
- This $575,000 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program supports research at Emory University to develop new synthetic methods and enabling strategies for the production of Ribosomally Synthesized Post-Translationally Modified Peptides (RiPPs). The goal is to create a universal catalytic platform to enable the synthesis of diverse RiPP natural products, which have shown promise as drug candidates but face...
- This federal Project Grant award of $800,000 from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) to Tufts University supports research led by Dr. Joshua Kritzer and co-investigators Dr. James Baleja and Dr. Yu-Shan Lin. The project aims to develop a new method for stabilizing synthetic collagen-like peptides using chemical "staples" in order to better understand the structure and function of natural collagen, the most abundant protein...
- This $126,656 Project Grant award, funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049), supports a collaborative research effort led by Professors Julie Biteen of the University of Michigan and David Masiello of the University of Washington. The goal is to develop a multifunctional, high-sensitivity instrument to measure plasmon-enhanced chirality and enable sensing of subtle, heterogeneous changes in chirality at the single-molecule...
This $248,968 Project Grant is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) and supports research by Professor Zhongyue John Yang at Vanderbilt University. The project aims to develop high-throughput computational workflows to investigate the origins of right-handed wrapping chirality in lasso peptides - a class of knotted, interlocked molecules with potential applications in biotechnology and therapeutics. The research combines quantum mechanics, molecular dynamics, and machine learning techniques to evaluate the thermodynamic and kinetic preferences for left- versus right-handed lasso peptide conformations, as well as identify potential enzyme cyclase mutants that could generate the less common left-handed form. This 3-year project, running from September 2025 to August 2028, seeks to uncover the mechanistic basis for nature's exclusive selection of right-handed lasso peptides and explore possibilities for engineering the left-handed topology.
Mod # | Description | ReasonForModification | Federal Obligation | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Not listed | $249.0k | 8/15/25 |