Dragnea Group

Members

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Principal Investigator

	Bogdan Dragnea Ph.D.	Profile
	Assistant Professor of Chemistry Adjunct Professor of Physics Phone: 812-856-0087 Fax: 812-855-8300	Department of Chemistry 800 E. Kirkwood Ave. Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405

Secretary

Diana McGovern

Office: C231

Phone: 812-855-5050

Fax: 812-855-8300

Postdoc

Irina Tsvetkova

Postdoc

Research Interest:

Influences of the stiffness of VLP cores on their ability to mimic viral RNA

Graduate Students

Dragos Amarie

Chemical Physics, Biophysics

Research Interest: Microlithographic fabrication applied to photonics

Microfluidics: developing photolithographic techniques for building microfluidic devices that are cheaper and more efficient than current techniques used in analyzing complex biological chemistry (specifically for study of chemotaxis and heptotaxis).

Micro-sensors: developing sub-micron cavity surface plasmon resonance (MSPR) biosensors capable of monitoring molecular interactions in microfluidic devices. This new type of miniature optical biosensor is able to detect and quantify molecular binding in volumes smaller than 5µL. This sensor is significantly smaller and more sensitive than existing related technologies, with an area of 2µm sq. (compare with Biacore’s 4mm sq). The combination of flexibility, compact size, high-speed detection and potential low price makes the MSPR an important advance, with applications in clinic, laboratory, and industry.

Stella Aniagyei

Analytical Chemistry

Research Interests: Nano-templates for viral protein cages assembly

Virus-like particles (VLPs) have already shown promise as therapeutic and diagnostic vectors, imaging agents, and as scaffolds and microreactors for advanced nanomaterials synthesis. All these applications require the ability to control the interaction between the artificial core and the capsid proteins. One way to do this is to investigate the effect of the core size, shape, and surface chemistry on the assembly outcome. My studies focus primarily on the cowpea chlorotic mottle virus (CCMV) and a mutant of its capsid protein, ND34. I am investigating the importance of the role of the nanoparticle scaffold in assembly as compared with protein-protein interactions by synthesis and encapsidation of spherical and rod-shaped GNPs in CCMV and NΔ34 capsid proteins. The rod-shaped VLPs in particular, are unique in that they can serve as building blocks for 3D optical metamaterials.

Suraj Dixit

Physical Chemistry

Research Interest:

Quantum dot encapsulation in virus capsids

Christopher Dufort

Analytical Chemistry

Research Interest:

Scanning probe micromechanical characterization of virus-like particles

Nancy Goicochea

Physical Chemistry

Research Interest: Alphavirus nucleocapsid self-assembly around spherical nanoparticle cores

This work focuses on the assembly of the viral protein cage of an alphavirus around a functionalized gold nanoparticle (GNP) core to form CLPs (core like particles). Since plant viruses are not human pathogens, it has been proposed to use them for drug delivery by engineering the virus surface at specific residues allowing recognition by cell surface receptors of a particular type of cell, such as cancer cells. However, using plant viruses for therapeutic delivery is challenging because of their inability to pass in the blood stream and the strong immune response from the host. Animal viruses provide a potential solution to this problem, in particular those viruses that can be naturally recognized by cell receptors of specific types of cells. It is not known at present whether the same principles that are currently under development to transform plant viruses into general cargo carriers will operate in the case of emerging animal virus platforms in use for gene delivery. An artificial alphavirus entirely devoid of its genetic material could be safely used for therapeutic delivery, and in our case, provide the basis for studying CLPs.

Xinlei Huang

Physical Chemistry

Research Interest: Virus-like Particles with Magnetic Cores

Efficient encapsulation of functionalized spherical nanoparticles by viral protein cages was found to occur even if the nanoparticle is larger than the inner cavity of the native capsid. This result raises the intriguing possibility of reprogramming the self-assembly of viral structural proteins. The iron oxide nanotemplates used in this work are superparamagnetic, with a blocking temperature of about 250 K, making these virus-like particles interesting for applications such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and bio-magnetic materials. Another novel feature of the virus-like particle assembly described in this work is the use of an anionic lipid micelle coat instead of a molecular layer covalently bound to the inorganic nanotemplate.

	Mario Vieweger	Physical Chemistry
	Research Interest: In vitro and in vivo detection and tracking of VLP assembly, disassembly, and trafficking using photothermal imaging

Undergraduates

	Chelsea Kennedy
	Research Interests: Investigating the effects of nucleation site size on observed freezing point, with potential application to studying viruses and bacteria in extreme temperature conditions

	Ryan Memmer
	Research Interests: Transfection of Nicotiana Benthamiana with agrobacterium colonies for the reproduction of Brome Mosaic Virus (BMV) and its applications to research.