Research Interests
The overarching goal of the Tezcan Lab is to create and understand biological complexity through chemical and protein design approaches. Our research is motivated by the fact that proteins are the most versatile building blocks for the construction of biological machines (e.g., photosystem II, nitrogenase and cytochrome c oxidase) and advanced scaffolding materials (e.g., collagen superstructures, microtubules, viruses) that provide the necessary molecular components to sustain the complexity of living systems. However, the ability of laboratory scientists to control the self-assembly of proteins or to use them as synthetic building blocks has been limited owing to the chemical and structural complexity/heterogeneity of protein molecules. Inspired by fundamental principles of inorganic coordination chemistry and supramolecular chemistry, our group develops new chemical strategies for the construction of complex protein assemblies with sophisticated structures and physicochemical properties, and integrate such systems into living systems.