Diego López Barreiro
@dlopezbarreiro.bsky.social
440 followers 260 following 10 posts
Lecturer in Chemical Engineering at @ucl.ac.uk. Principal Investigator at the @LBgroup.bsky.social. Protein biopolymers & other biobased materials. Web: theLBgroup.github.io Opinions are my own. He/him.
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dlopezbarreiro.bsky.social
Hello darkness, my old friend 😱
Reposted by Diego López Barreiro
proftomellis.bsky.social
We're hiring for 2 postdocs to work in our lab in London on the newly announced Wellcome Trust SynHG project. If you know people looking to work on big-scale ambitious science like this, please RT and share this with them. Apply by 7/20, interviews in Aug. imperial.ac.uk/jobs/search-...
dlopezbarreiro.bsky.social
Special thanks to our invited speakers @guidobolognesi.bsky.social, @eirini-velliou.bsky.social and Bob Schroeder, and to all the talk/poster presenters. A big thank you also to @uclengineering.bsky.social and @softmatter.rsc.org for sponsoring the event and the prizes.

See you next year!
dlopezbarreiro.bsky.social
Last Friday we celebrated the 7th meeting of the UCL Cross-disciplinary Network on Soft Materials. It was great to see so many researchers across the university presenting their work on such a wide range of topics.
Reposted by Diego López Barreiro
proftomellis.bsky.social
My dept in London at Imperial (Bioengineering) is recruiting a group leader at Professor level 🧑‍🎓 Please RT. It's a great place with world-class expertise in all sorts of biomedical & biological engineering topics like synthetic biology. It's also not in the USA. www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs/search-...
Reposted by Diego López Barreiro
shapingmatterlab.bsky.social
🌳How do trees ensure their branches are not blown off by the wind, and can we harness this for 3D-printed structures?

Caroline's paper explores how wavy fibre patterns inspired by trees can toughen 3D-printed materials.🪴

Check it out! #3DPrinting #Bioinspired #MaterialsScience #PlantScience ~IN
dlopezbarreiro.bsky.social
I’ve been reading PhD applications all day. >90% include the expressions “academic journey” and “skills honed”. ChatGPT, you need to become way more creative and put an end to this.
dlopezbarreiro.bsky.social
Just a few days left to apply to these two PhD opportunities at @uclengineering.bsky.social. More details below. Please help us spread the word! 🙏
lbgroup.bsky.social
Hi! We have two very interesting PhD opportunities in our lab 🦠🧬🔬. Find more information and the application links below! 👇
dlopezbarreiro.bsky.social
We have two PhD opportunities in the lab, take a look below!
lbgroup.bsky.social
Hi! We have two very interesting PhD opportunities in our lab 🦠🧬🔬. Find more information and the application links below! 👇
dlopezbarreiro.bsky.social
We published a paper.
We also created an account for the group.
Not a bad ending to 2024 😀
lbgroup.bsky.social
Hello world! Our first experimental publication is out 🙂

Check the link below to understand how we tuned the viscoelasticity of silk-elastin-like polypeptides (SELPs) hydrogels without modifying their amino acid sequence. It's all in the β-sheets!

bit.ly/3VKVeZR
Order–Disorder Balance in Silk-Elastin-like Polypeptides Determines Their Self-Assembly into Hydrogel Networks
The biofabrication of recombinant structural proteins with a range of mechanical or structural features usually relies on the generation of protein libraries displaying variations in terms of amino acid composition, block structure, molecular weight, or physical/chemical cross-linking sites. This approach, while highly successful in generating a wealth of knowledge regarding the links between design features and material properties, has some inherent limitations related to its low throughput. This slows down the pace of the development of de novo recombinant structural proteins. Here, we propose an approach to tune the viscoelastic properties of temperature-responsive hydrogels made of silk-elastin-like polypeptides (SELPs) without modifying their sequence. To do so, we subject purified SELPs to two different postprocessing methods─water annealing or EtOH annealing─that alter the topology of highly disordered SELP networks via the formation of ordered intermolecular β-sheet physical cross-links. Combining different analytical techniques, we connect the order/disorder balance in SELPs with their gelling behavior. Furthermore, we show that introducing a functional block (in this case, a biomineralizing peptide) in the sequence of SELPs can disrupt its self-assembly and that such disruption can only be overcome by EtOH annealing. Our results suggest that postprocessing of as-purified SELPs might be a simple approach to tune the self-assembly of SELPs into biomaterials with bespoke viscoelastic properties beyond the traditional approach of developing SELP libraries via genetic engineering.
pubs.acs.org
Reposted by Diego López Barreiro
dlopezbarreiro.bsky.social
The CDT in Engineering Solutions for Antimicrobial Resistance is recruiting its 2025 cohort. Jack Jeffries and I have the perfect project for you. Join us to develop the next generation of antimicrobial materials!

More info: www.findaphd.com/phds/program...

➡️ Application deadline: 26/01/25
dlopezbarreiro.bsky.social
One more self-nomination here, please 🙋‍♂️. Thanks!