School of Chemistry

Stefan Auer

RCUK Academic Fellow
Research section: Physical Chemistry

Contact details

Keywords

Computational biophysics
Soft matter physics
Statistical mechanics
Biomolecular self-assembly
Phase transitions
Nucleation

Research interests

My research is focused on the application of theoretical computational tools developed in soft condensed matter physics to investigate the phase behaviour and transitions of complex systems of biomolecules. From a purely statistical mechanical point of view an ensemble of many peptides and proteins represents a new and important system which should lead to bridge our understanding of colloidal systems, polymers, and proteins. Examples of transitions that I investigated include colloidal crystallization and the aggregation of proteins into amyloid fibrils. My long term goal is to understand more generally the nucleation and regulation of normal and aberrant self-assembly in biological systems, and how we can functionalise them as nanomaterials.

Useful links

Research group pages   
Centre for Molecular Nanoscience    
   

Selected publications

Phase diagram of α-helical and β-sheet forming peptides S. Auer, and D. Kashchiev, Phys. Rev. Lett., 104 168105 (2010)

Atomistic theory of amyloid fibril nucleation R. Cabriolu, D. Kashchiev, and S. Auer, J. Chem. Phys., 133 225101 (2010)

Phase phenomena in supported lipid films under varying electric potential A. Brukhno, A. Akinshina, C. Zachary, A. Nelson, and S. Auer, Soft Matter, 7 1006 (2011)

A condensation-ordering mechanism in nanoparticle-catalyzed peptide aggregation S. Auer, A. Trovato, and M. Vendruscolo, PLoS Comput Biol, 5 e1000458 (2009)