Faculty Directory
Neha Kamat

Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and (by courtesy) Chemical and Biological Engineering

Contact

2233 Tech Drive
Mudd 5110
Evanston, IL 60208-3109

847-467-2671Email Neha Kamat

Website

Kamat Lab

Centers

Center of Synthetic Biology

Departments

Biomedical Engineering

Affiliations

PhD Program in Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences

Download CV

Education

NASA Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA

Ph.D. Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

B.S. Bioengineering, Rice University, Houston, TX


Research Interests

Biological membranes, composed largely of lipids and proteins, define the boundary of our smallest unit of life, the cell. These biochemical structures mediate some of the most critical cellular functions, enabling the movement of physical and chemical information, and undergoing complex shape changes to facilitate movement, growth, and division. Our lab aims to understand and harness biological membranes as a biomaterial for fundamental biological studies and engineering applications in diagnostics and disease. A central hypothesis of our work is that biophysical properties of membranes matter for membrane protein folding and function and through understanding this relationship we can better assemble and design membrane-based therapeutics.

Specifically, we pursue two research thrusts:

(1)    We study the impact of lipid composition on membrane protein folding and function.

(2)    We engineer membrane-based devices for therapeutic and sensing applications.


These thrusts are distinct but synergistic: The fundamental biophysical studies we conduct in Thrust #1 provide mechanistic insights that we use to design membrane-based materials with cell-like capabilities in Thrust #2. In turn, the materials we design provide new tools to investigate cellular systems.



Selected Publications

  • O’Callaghan, Jessica Ann; Kamat, Neha P.; Vargo, Kevin B.; Chattaraj, Rajarshi; Lee, Daeyeon; Hammer, Daniel A., A microfluidic platform for the synthesis of polymer and polymer-protein-based protocells, European Physical Journal E (2024).
  • Dogterom, Marileen; Kamat, Neha P.; Jewett, Michael Christopher; Adamala, Katarzyna P., Progress in Engineering Synthetic Cells and Cell-Free Systems, ACS synthetic biology (2024).
  • Steinkühler, Jan; Peruzzi, Justin A.; Krüger, Antje; Villaseñor, Citlayi G.; Jacobs, Miranda L.; Jewett, Michael C.; Kamat, Neha P., Improving Cell-Free Expression of Model Membrane Proteins by Tuning Ribosome Cotranslational Membrane Association and Nascent Chain Aggregation, ACS synthetic biology (2024).
  • Peruzzi, Justin A.; Vu, Timothy Q.; Gunnels, Taylor F.; Kamat, Neha P., Rapid Generation of Therapeutic Nanoparticles Using Cell-Free Expression Systems, Small Methods (2023).
  • Peruzzi, Justin A.; Galvez, Nina R.; Kamat, Neha P., Engineering transmembrane signal transduction in synthetic membranes using two-component systems, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2023).
  • Vu, Timothy Q.; Sant’Anna, Lucas E.; Kamat, Neha P., Tuning Targeted Liposome Avidity to Cells via Lipid Phase Separation, Biomacromolecules (2023).
  • Peruzzi, Justin A.; Vu, Timothy Q.; Kamat, Neha P., Engineered membrane receptors with customizable input and output functions, Trends in biotechnology (2023).
  • Manzer, Zachary A.; Ghosh, Surajit; Roy, Arpita; Jacobs, Miranda L.; Carten, Juliana; Kamat, Neha P.; Daniel, Susan, Cell-Free Synthesis Goes Electric, ACS synthetic biology (2023).

Patents

1. Daniel A Hammer, Ivan Julian Dmochowski, Gregory Patrick Robbins, Masaya S Jimbo, Michael J Therien, and Neha P Kamat. Polymer Vesicles for Selective Electromagnetic Energy-Induced Delivery. US Patent App. 12/548, 801.