Prof. Peng Chen, Cornell University

Single-Molecule Nanocatalysis and Bioinorganic Chemistry

Joint Physical/Inorganic Chemistry Seminar Series

Nanoscale materials catalyze many important chemical transformations. Understanding their catalytic properties is essential, but hampered by their structural heterogeneity. I will present our research in using single-molecule fluorescence microscopy to study the catalysis of nanocatalysts to overcome this heterogeneity obstacle. Specifically, I will talk about imaging catalysis of individual gold nanoparticles at the single-particle, single-turnover resolution in real time under ambient solution conditions. We obtain insights into the interplay between the heterogeneous reactivity, dynamic surface restructuring, differential selectivity in parallel reaction pathways, and variable surface sites in nanocatalysis.

I will also present our research in integrating single-molecule approaches into bioinorganic chemistry, in particular in studying the protein machineries involved in biological metal regulation and trafficking. I will present a story about how we use engineered DNA Holliday junctions as single-molecule reporters to probe the actions of MerR-family metalloregulators on DNA for transcriptional regulation.

For more information contact Prof. Christine Payne (404-385-3125) or Prof. Jake Soper (404-894-4022).