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Students

New Advanced Functional Materials Paper

The lab has a new paper out in Advanced Functional Materials titled: "Unraveling the Molecular Origin of Prey-wrapping Spider Silk's Unique Mechanical Properties and Assembly Process Using NMR". Prey wrap spider silk exhibits high extensibility and superior toughness compared to other types of spider silk and is a promising target for biomaterials design. In this paper, the lab combines mechanical testing, solution NMR on native glands, SSNMR on spun fibers and AlphaFold structure prediction to elucidate the silk's unique liquid-to-solid transition and further correlate the silk fibers conformational structure with the silk's fantastic mechanics. These results and models are providing the fundamental basis for the design of biomimetic materials inspired by the prey wrap spider silk system. The study was led by lab post-doc, Kevin Chalek, with major contributions from David Onofrei, Julian Aldana, Hannah Johnson, and NREL scientist, Bennett Addison. For anyone interested, you can check out the paper here: Unraveling the Molecular Origin of Prey‐Wrapping Spider Silk's Unique Mechanical Properties and Assembly Process Using NMR onlinelibrary.wiley.com ...

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SDSU Graduation – Hannah Johnson & Yuan Li PhDs

SDSU Graduation was this past weekend. Proud of the two most recent PhD students from the Holland Lab, Yuan Li and Hannah Johnson!!! Yuan's thesis is on: "Elucidating Bio-Nano Interface Atomic Structure in Hydroxyapatite Nanoparticles with SSNMR". Hannah's thesis is on: "The Role of Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation in Spider Silk Formation". A busy summer ahead getting all of their awesome manuscripts out!!! ...

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Julian Aldana and Yuan Li Receive Research Awards

Julian and Yuan were awarded Outstanding Research Awards by the SDSU Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Julian was awarded his for Outstanding Undergraduate Research and Yuan for Outstanding Research at the PhD level. Julian's research work is focused on molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of spider silk proteins. Yuan is working on Bio-Nano interface atomic structure in hydroxyapatite nanoparticles with SSNMR. Congratulations Julian and Yuan!!! ...

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Holland Lab Attends ENC Conference

The Holland Lab attended the Experimental NMR Conference (ENC) at Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, CA https://www.enc-conference.org/Conference-2024. This is the premier conference in experimental magnetic resonance including solution and solid-state NMR and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The lab gave two talks and presented three posters. Lab post-doc, Dr. Kevin Chalek's talk was on Sunday (4/7) in the Young Scientist Symposium titled "Studying Sidechain Interactions in Dragline Spider Silk Fibers Using MAS Solid-state NMR and DNP". Kevin also presented a poster on the same topic Tues/Thurs. Research scientist and SDSU NMR Facility Manager, Dr. David Onofrei gave a talk in the Biomolecular Solution NMR Session on Tuesday (4/9) titled "Using CS-ROSETTA to Probe Assembly of Intrinsically Disordered Spider Silk Proteins in Solution". PhD grad student, Hannah Johnson presented a poster on Tues/Thurs titled "Solution NMR of Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation in Native Major Ampullate Spider Silk Proteins Indicates Arg and Tyr Influence Pre-Assembly". PhD grad student, Yuan Li presented a poster on Mon/Wed titled "The Calcium Sites of Hydroxyapatite with Different Morphologies and Crystal Phases Investigated by 43Ca MAS Solid-state NMR". Yuan was also awarded an ENC graduate student travel award to support her attendance. Congrats Yuan!!! Below is a picture from the Lab Dinner at the Fish Hopper in Monterey where we caught up with Lab alumni, Dr. Haley Swanson, who is now Bruker NMR West Coast Sales Rep. We had fantastic discussions regarding our upcoming 600 MHz Ascend NMR magnet install and some plans for new cutting edge probes in Diffusion and Solid-state NMR for the future. Check out the picture from dinner below: ...

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