New Insights into Nanostructured Silica Formation in Diatoms
Professor Mark Hildebrand received a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Arizona, and is a Research Scientist in the Marine Biology Research Division at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD. Research in his lab is focused on the unicellular microalgae called diatoms. Diatom cell walls are a composite of organic material and silica, which is structured in a diversity of shapes with features spanning the nano- to micro-scale. The ability of diatoms to control silica structure formation is unparalleled in biology, and exceeds current capabilities of synthetic materials approaches in terms of generation of complex three dimensional structures. The lab applies cellular and molecular biology approaches to understand diatom silica structure formation using genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, transgenic, and high resolution imaging tools. Integration of these approaches enables a coherent picture of the process of structure formation across scales ranging from the nanometer to the micron, and elucidation of top down and bottom up processing events and their integration. An ultimate practical goal of the research is to develop diatoms for nanotechnology either by the direct use of materials derived from diatom silica or as an inspirational source for biomimetic-based synthetic materials approaches.
