G. Andrew Woolley

Academic Title: Professor

Phone: 416-978-0675

Office: LM 526

Email:

Research Homepage: http://www.chem.utoronto.ca/staff/GAW/

Chemists have learned enough about the properties of various groupings of atoms to be able to design and synthesize a wide variety of molecules in a rational way. As knowledge accumulates, bigger, fancier "supramolecules" are being created.

Structural biologists, on the other hand, by studying the supramolecules that Nature provides (proteins for instance), have been learning more and more about how they are built and how they function.

The two fields have been moving steadily closer together. Using the same building blocks Nature uses to make proteins we create supramolecules of designed structure and function which can act in novel ways as molecular devices. We focus particularly on molecules or molecular assemblies which act as ion channels and enzymes. 

For instance, we have designed a synthetic ion channel which is regulated by transmembrane voltage (pictured below). This can be thought of as a channel with tethered plug - the plug can move in and out of the ion pathway and we can detect this movement at the single molecule level.

The work in our laboratory can be very interdisciplinary and students will have opportunities to interact with biologists and physicists as well as chemists. There are opportunities in synthesis, modelling, analysis of single channel behaviour and in spectroscopy (circular dichroism, NMR, fluorescence). The best part however is that there is great opportunity for creativity - one can sculpt on a molecular scale.

See Research Homepage