University System of Maryland

Purdue Research Foundation

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Vanderbilt University

Univ. of Maryland Biotechnology Institute

James N Culver

Michael Harris

Elizabeth Royston

Evelyn N Wang

Reza Ghodssi

Ryan Enright

Matthew McCarthy

Adam Brown

Gerald Stubbs

Konstantinos Gerasopoulos

Surfaces having a hierarchical structure&#x2014;having features of both microscale and nanoscale dimensions&#x2014;can exhibit superhydrophobic properties and advantageous condensation and heat transfer properties. The hierarchical surfaces can be fabricated using biological nanostructures, such as viruses as a self-assembled nanoscale template.

Superhydrophobic surfaces

The present invention relates to high content surface areas containing nickel and/or cobalt metallic compounds assembled on a modified Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) template, wherein the modified TMV template is engineered to encode unique placement of cysteine residues that self-assemble onto gold patterned surfaces in a substantially aligned fashion, producing a &#x3e;10 fold increase in surface area. Deposition of ionic metals onto the surface assembled virus templates produce uniform metal coatings for the fabrication of oriented high surface area materials.

Metal coated virus-based nanoelectrodes and method of assembling of same

The present invention relates to a system and method providing for increased silica growth on a bio-template, wherein the bio-template is pretreated with aniline to produce a uniform silica attractive surface and yielding a significant silica layers of at least 10 nm, and more preferably at least 20 nm in thickness, thereby providing for a high degree of stability to the bio-template.

Preparation of silica stabilized biological templates for the production of metal and layered nanoparticles

The present invention provides a method for protecting plants against infection by pathogenic plant viruses comprising administering to the plant a nucleic acid, encoding a pathogenic plant virus protein, containing substitutions in the genetic sequence which result in the replacement of amino acids having carboxylate side chains with uncharged amino acids and which have the phenotypic effect of displacing wild type coat proteins in a wild type virus and inhibiting the ability of the wild type virus to disassemble under conditions whereby the nucleic acid is expressed as a mutant coat protein within the plant. Also provided is a nucleic acid, encoding a pathogenic plant virus protein, containing substitutions in the genetic sequence which result in the replacement of amino acids having carboxylate side chains with uncharged amino acids and which have the phenotypic effect of displacing wild type coat proteins in a wild type virus and inhibiting the ability of the wild type virus to disassemble.

Transgenic plants expressing disassembly deficient viral coat proteins

Growing community of inventors

Potomac, MD, United States of America

James N Culver