Jay Groves of Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Division spoke yesterday at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in St. Louis. His talk, part of a multi-day nanotechnology seminar, focused on his pioneering work developing biologically inspired synthetic membranes that combine nanotechnology with biochemistry to give scientists a unique way to study biological systems. The new technique, called supported membrane nanotechnology, is already yielding advances in cell research and drug development.

“It is enabling us to break new ground in what we can learn about biology,” said Groves, a chemist who also holds a joint appointment with UC Berkeley’s Chemistry Department.

Recently, Groves led a team of researchers that used nano-sized synthetic membranes to directly control signaling activity in living T cells from the immune system. Using specially patterned membranes, it became possible to effectively go inside a living cell and physically alter the distribution of T cell signaling molecules. His team constructed the membranes out of lipids assembled onto a substrate of solid silica.

“Pattern-supported membrane substrates enable molecular scale dissection of live signaling processes,” said Groves.

Groves has also used supported membrane technology to develop a fast, cheap, and highly sensitive way to detect molecular interactions without using sophisticated equipment. Their technique, which uses thousands of microscopic glass beads coated with a substance that mimics a cell membrane, opens the door for the high throughput evaluation of an ever-growing family of pharmaceuticals that fight diseases by targeting membrane-bound receptors.

“We can look at the position of the particles using a cheap microscope and detect very small amounts of protein binding, which is important in drug development tests,” said Groves.