Ongoing Research Projects in the Vaden Lab

Characterizing Protein Structures and Dynamics in Aqueous Ionic Liquid Solutions

Current Team: Kelsey DeFrates, Brittany Stinger, Sam McIntyre, and Taylor Hebert

Ionic liquids are room-temperature molten organic salts with applications throughout chemistry and biochemistry. When added to aqueous solution, ionic liquids can have applications in biotechnology and biomedical sciences. For example, ionic liquids can be used to selectively stabilize or destabilize different types of proteins. We are interested in understanding how ionic liquids in aqueous solution affect the structure and stability of different proteins.

We are working to measure protein stabilities (DG_unfolding, DH_unfolding, etc) using conventional biophysical chemistry techniques and then measure these parameters in the presence of ionic liquids to quantify how proteins are affected by the novel solvent additives. We are also interested in understanding how ionic liquids affect different protein structures. For example, do ionic liquids affect helices differently than sheets? Target proteins include myoglobin, red fluorescent protein (mCherry), and azurin, all of which have different biochemical applications.

Current results of this project include a comprehensive study of mCherry in TMG-Amino acid ionic liquids:

And HDX results showing myoglobin has an open tertiary structure in BMIBF₄ ionic liquids.

Characterizing Proton Solvation Structures in Acidic Ionic Liquid Solutions

Current Team: Tam Nguyen, Taylor Hebert, Rosalia Nanfara

Acidic ionic liquids are ionic liquids with Bronsted Acid solutes. They have numerous applications as proton transport solvents for electrochemistry, fuel cells, and organic synthesis. We are interested in how the proton is solvated in an acidic ionic liquid. We are currently working on TMG-Amino acid ionic liquids as proton transport systems. Previous results (shown below) have shown how the acid HTFSI dissolved in the ionic liquid pyrrolidinium TFSI forms a bridged-proton structure involved in the rapid Grotthus-like proton transport leading to high conductivity.

Characterizing Lipid Membrane Permeability in Aqueous Ionic Liquid Solutions

Current Team: Kendall Cook, Alana Swinton

Synthesizing and Evaluating Different Metal Phosphide Electro-Catalysts for Hydrogen Reduction

Current Team: Nicole Thatcher, Ryan Laytham, and Tam Nguyen

Computational Simulations of Proteins and Dyes in Ionic Liquids

Current Team: Jacqueline Mohen and Ryan Palner