Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (IF): Biohybrid Materials and Systems Chemistry

The research group of Andrés de la Escosura (http://syschemdelaescosura.es/) belongs to the Organic Chemistry Department and the recently created Institute for Advanced Research in Chemical Sciences (IAdChem) at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (UAM). The group is concerned with the design and synthesis of new supramolecular and nanostructured hybrids from synthetic and biological components, and the study of their complex biological functions. After finding useful properties of protein capsids as nanoreactors and nanocontainers to incorporate different kinds of materials, we are currently working in areas that include biomedical applications and prebiotic systems chemistry.

Research focus of the fellowship: Study of dynamic combinatorial libraries (DCL) that comprise life-like features such as adaptation and replication. Our systems´ components will be synthetic nucleolipid and nucleopeptide hybrids, built from reversible linkages between the nucleobase, peptide and lipid fragments, and with the possibility to interact to each other by non-covalent base-pairing interactions.