Wolfgang Frey, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor

Curriculum Vitae

Lab Website

wfrey@mail.utexas.edu

Research Focus

Nanostructured polymeric and inorganic surfaces in cell interaction, bio-optical sensors in protein ligand recognition, single molecular force spectroscopy.

Research Interests

There are three areas of interest at the basis of the research program in our group: (1) Structured surfaces as a tool to guide and manipulate cells and engineer tissues, (2) nanodevices for novel, inexpensive, and highly parallel sensors, (3) single molecule force spectroscopy on cellular membrane receptors. These thrusts are strongly inter-connected. Modern material engineering based on self-assembly and soft and classical lithography have miniaturized features and created the ability to manipulate individual cells and observe the reactions on a cellular level. Many of these materials are inexpensive and easily adapted to changing needs and are therefore ideally suited to test the complex interconnectivities of cellular responses and regulatory processes. Tissue engineering will need tools to dynamically control phenotypical cellular properties like proliferation, motility, and protein production. However, even though it may be possible to induce a response in individual cells, it is often impossible to monitor molecular responses in real time. Nanostructure-based sensors with high sensitivity will have the potential to allow such detection in cellular real-time assays. These sensors will additionally be useful as inexpensive tools for high throughput screening, as needed, for instance, in proteomics.  Finally, up- and down-regulation of cell membrane-bound receptors and their affinity to triggers and inhibitors in a signaling path will be much better understood if methods to dynamically determine the real-time local distribution and the strength of the binding can be developed.

Selected Publications 

• Frey, W., D.E. Meyer, and A. Chilkoti, "Thermodynamically Reversible Addressing of a Stimuli Responsive Fusion Protein onto a Patterned Surface Template". Langmuir 19: 1641-1653. (2003)
• Frey, W., D.E. Meyer, and A. Chilkoti, "Dynamic Addressing of a Surface Pattern by a Stimuli Responsive Fusion Protein". Adv. Mater. 15 (3): 248-251. (2003)
• Frey, W., Woods, C.K., Chilkoti, A.: "Ultraflat nanosphere lithography: A new method to fabricate flat nanostructures", Adv. Mater. 12 (20), 1515-19 (2000)
• Yang, ZP., Frey, W., Oliver, T., Chilkoti, A.: "Light-activated affinity micropattern of proteins on self-assembled monolayers on gold", Langmuir 16 (4), 1751-1758 (2000)
• Frey, W., Brink, J., Schief, W. R. Jr., Chiu, Wah, Vogel, V.: "Lattice structure of metal-lipid chelated two-dimensional streptavidin crystals" , Biophysical Journal 74 (5), 2674-2679, (1998)
• Frey, W., Schief Jr., W. R. , Pack, D. W., Chen, C.-T., Chilkoti, A., Stayton, P. S., Vogel, V., Arnold, F. H.: "Two-dimensional protein crystallization via metal-ion coordination by naturally-occurring surface histidins", Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) 93, 4937-4941 (1996)
  
• Frey, W., Schief Jr., W.R., Vogel, V.: "Two-dimensional crystallization of streptavidin studied by quantitative Brewster angle microscopy", Langmuir 12, (5), 1312 - 1320, (1996)