Prof. Dr. Pierre Schaaf

CV

Pierre Schaaf got an engineering degree from the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles de la ville de Paris (ESPCI) in 1982 and a PhD in Physical-Chemistry from the University Louis Pasteur of Strasbourg in 1986. He performed most of his research career at the Institut Charles Sadron (ICS, CNRS) at Strasbourg and was appointed Full Professor in 1991 at the Chemistry Engineering School of Strasbourg (ECPM) and is now Director of the INSERM laboratory "Biomaterials and Bioengineering" (U1121) and remains associate researcher at ICS. He is also senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. His research interests include polyelectro­lyte multilayers, stimuli-responsive and bioactive films, polyelectrolyte complex materials and soft-mechano chemistry.

FRIAS-Projekt

Development of model mechano-transduction films based on engineered avidin monomers: An example of soft-mechano-chemistry (with Stefan Schiller)

The development of chemo-mechano-responsive systems, systems that respond chemically to a mechanical stimulus, is an emerging field in chemistry. Most of the systems developed so far are based on affecting internal chemical bonds when molecules are put under a mechanical stress. Nature on the other hand transforms a mechanical force into a chemical signal by using force induced conformational changes of proteins. The goal of the project is to develop chemo-mechano-responsive systems relying on this simple idea: developing systems which respond chemically to stretching by modifying their conformation. This approach can be called Soft-Mechano-Chemistry. For this purpose we will design avidin monomer mutants. The mutations will allow to covalently anchor these proteins onto an elastomeric substrate and to weaken the avidin interaction with biotin upon stretching. This should allow modulating mechanically the avidin/biotin binding strength. This project should result in the first system where the ligand/receptor interaction can be modulated by force-induced conformational changes. It should also constitute a new type of biointeraction platform for biosensing and tissue engineering which can be modulated mechanically.

Publikationen (Auswahl)

• J. Longo, C. Yao, C. Rios, NTT. Chau,  F. Boulmedais, J. Hemmerlé, P. Lavalle, SM. Schiller, P. Schaaf, L. Jierry, Reversible biomechano-responsive surface based on Green Fluorescent Protein genetically modified With unnatural amino-acids, Chemical Communications 51, 231-235 (2015)
• C.Rios,, J. Longo, S. Zahouani, T. Garlier, C. Vogt, A. Reisch, B. Senger, F. Boulmedais, J. Hemmerlé, K. Benmlih, B; Frisch, P. Schaaf, L. Jierry, P. Lavalle, A new biomimetic route to  engineer enzymatically mechano-responsive materials, Chemical Communications 51, 5622-5625 (2015).
• C. Vigier-Carrière, T. Garnier, D. Wagner, P. Lavalle, M. Rabineau, J. hemmerlé, B. Senger, P. Schaaf, F. Boulmedais, L. Jierry, Bioactive seed layer for surface-confined self-assembly of peptides,        Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 54, 10198-10201 (2015)
• J. Bacharouche, F. Badique, A. Fahs, M.V. Spanedda, A. Geissler, J.P. Malval, M.F. Vallat, K. Anselme, G. Francius, B. Frisch, J. Hemmerlé, P. Schaaf, V. Roucoules, Biomimetic Cryptic Site Surfaces for Reversible Chemo- and Cyto-mechanoresponsive Substrates, ACS Nano 7, 3457-3465 (2013)
• J. Davila, A. Chassepot, J. Longo, F. Boulmedais,A. Reisch, B Frisch, F. Meyer, J.C. Voegel, P. J. Mésini, B. Senger, M.H. Metz-Boutigue, J. Hemmerlé, Ph. Lavalle, P. Schaaf, L. Jierry, Cyto-mechanoresponsive Polyelectrolyte Multilayer Films, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 134, 83-86 (2012)