Paul Nicu, a researcher member of the "Babes-Bolyai" University (UBB) community in Cluj-Napoca, is part of the team coordinated by a Nobel laureate to study the mechanisms of life replicated in the laboratory.
"A research article recently published on the cover of the prestigious journal Nature Chemistry marks an important moment for Romanian science through the presence of researcher Paul Nicu, a member of the UBB community, within an international collaboration led by Nobel Prize laureate Ben L. Feringa. The study succeeded, for the first time in the world, in reproducing in the laboratory, in a controlled manner, the structural dynamics of proteins and DNA - a unique combination of conformational adaptability and configurational recyclability," a press release of the UBB reads on Monday.
According to the same source, the polymers synthesised by the research team behave like natural biomolecules: they are built from simple disulfide-based units, they can reversibly switch from disordered structures to ordered helical structures and back to the initial monomers.
"This capacity for self-organisation and integral recycling offers a concrete path for the design of sustainable materials of the future, opening a new path for adaptive materials research and redefining the concept of smart synthetic matter. The Romanian contribution was a significant one, aiming at the theoretical modeling of polymer systems studied experimentally, which led to the identification and validation of the mechanisms underlying these essential life processes," the abovementioned source also shows.
Paul Nicu, PhD, is a researcher at the Provitam Foundation and an associate researcher at the Babes-Bolyai University, Centre for Fundamental and Applied Chemistry - Metallomics, within the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. With extensive experience in the field of computational chemistry and quantum modeling of spectroscopic properties, Paul Nicu, PhD, has an important contribution to the training of master's and doctoral students at UBB, being actively involved in activities such as the annual series of conferences and tutorials "Molecular Modeling in Chemistry and Biochemistry" and the summer school for doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers "International School - Quantum Chemistry of Excited States (QCES)".
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