School of Chemistry

Paul Beales

Senior Translational Research Fellow
Research section: Physical Chemistry

Contact details

Keywords

Biomolecular self-assembly
Membrane biophysics
Bionanotechnology
Biological soft matter
Nucleic acid amphiphiles
Bottom-up synthetic biology
Nanomedicine and Nanotoxicology

Research interests

Paul’s research focuses on the biophysical properties of lipid membranes and the applications of membrane-based materials. His current work specifically addresses challenges across the field of nanomedicine. This work includes the use of nucleic acid amphiphiles in nanomaterial assembly, adhesion studies and targeted drug delivery. Paul is also interested in therapeutic encapsulation in lipid-based systems and the development of artificial cellular systems for fundamental studies on their interactions with drug delivery systems (relevant to intracellular transport) and nanoparticles (relevant to potential nanotoxicity).

Selected publications

Beales P.A., Nam J. and Vanderlick T.K.; Specific adhesion between DNA-functionalized “Janus” vesicles: size-limited clusters. Soft Matter, DOI: 10.1039/C0SM01055C (2011)

Nam J., Beales P.A. and Vanderlick T.K.; Giant Phospholipid/Block Copolymer Hybrid Vesicles: Mixing Behavior and Domain Formation. Langmuir 27 (1), 1-6 (2011)

Beales P.A. and Vanderlick T.K.; Partitioning of Membrane-Anchored DNA Between Coexisting Lipid Phases. Journal of Physical Chemistry B. 113 (42), 13678 – 13686 (2009).

DNA as Membrane-Bound Ligand-Receptor Pairs: Duplex Stability is Tuned by Intermembrane Forces. Biophysical Journal 96 (4), 1554 – 1565 (2009).