Drawing inspiration from the cooperativity on display in the flagellar motor, our World Champion BIOMOD team built an ultra-sensitive biosensor out of a circular ring of DNA switches tethered together. This biosensor can amplify the target signal in a noisy environment, but its sensitivity is tunable to avoid troublesome false-positives. We design new biosensors and attempt to build diagnostic devices incorporating simple technologies harnessing the power of cooperativity.

Who is the Lee Lab?

10mer

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Flagellar Motor

Flagellum

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SIGNAL CONCENTRATION

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NON-COOPERATIVE COOPERATIVE

Using our unique 3D DNA barrel-shaped nanostructures, we synthesize custom flagellar motors of varying size. This ushers in the era of ‘bespoke bionanotechnology’ where we not only understand nature’s principles of design, but we also tinker with them to directly control self assembly.

The BFM is one of the pinnacles of evolution. We examine exactly which small changes can together result in the emergence of complexity. Using experimental evolution we characterize how the motor changes as it is forced to evolve to run on different energy sources.

The Lee Group has pioneered technology that allows us to synthesise nanoscale DNA structures, image and measure the interactions of single molecules as they assemble into complexes, and now finally design novel nanomachines for different medical and technology applications.

How Nature builds things: The construction of man-made machines requires each component to be placed in its correct position by “hands”, that have an intimate knowledge of the entire construction plan. In nature, there aren’t any hands to guide the process! In biology large numbers of components robustly self-organise into complex and functional systems.

UNSW-SOMS

LEE LABORATORY - MOLECULAR MOTORS GROUP

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Going BUSHHaving a chat with Dr KARL

Winning at HARVARD

Lipid BiLayer

In the LAB

- a Synthetic Home for Membrane Proteins

We use artificial bilayers in the form of droplet-hydrogel membranes to examine membrane proteins where we can simultaneously measure electrical activity and image the number of subunits in a complex. This allows us to characterize how pores form and what drives them to open, to understand how a variety of cellular signalling mechanisms work.

Membrane proteinFluorescence

Electrode

Amplifyer

Currents

TIR Laser Beam

CoverslipAgarose

Lipid inhexadecane

Sensor Strand

Linking Bands

FliG Protein

DNA OrigamiBarrel

LAWRENCE.LEE@UNSW.EDU.AUhttps://sms.unsw.edu.au/lawrence-lee

Contact

LAWRENCE.LEE@UNSW.EDU.AUhttps://sms.unsw.edu.au/lawrence-lee)

Contact