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Florida Faculty and Professional Staff
Brian Paegel
Assistant Professor
Department of Chemistry
TSRI - 2004
Joint Appointments Department of Molecular Therapeutics
Education
B.S. Duke University 1998
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley 2003
Postdoctoral Fellow, The Scripps Research Institute 2004
Awards & Activities
NIH Pathway to Independence Award 2007-2010
NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow 2004-2006
Research Focus
Directed evolution is the application of Darwinian principles to populations of molecules rather than organisms. Repeated rounds of selection, mutagenesis and amplification yield macromolecules with the desired chemical activity. The key to directed evolution is linking the molecule that expresses the desired chemical activity, or phenotype, to the informational molecule encoding it, or genotype. We are exploring encapsulation of the genotype and phenotype in microscopic compartments for achieving genotype-phenotype linkage.
Conventional methodologies for generating microscopic compartments are rudimentary and irreproducible. Microfluidic processors designed and fabricated in our laboratory will control the synthesis and high-throughput screening of homogeneous droplet arrays, and the formulation of homogeneous phospholipid vesicles. Our goal is to move toward evolvable macromolecular assemblies with applications in targeted drug delivery, and liposomal receptor display for high-throughput structure-function studies and drug screening.
Selected References
Paegel BM, Joyce GF (2008) Darwinian evolution on a chip. PLoS Biol 6:900-906.
Paegel BM, Grover WH, Skelley AM, Mathies RA, Joyce GF (2006) Microfluidic serial dilution circuit. Anal Chem 78: 7522-7527.
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