Programmable Membrane Interfaces for Building and Controlling Neuronal Communication by Dr Ramakrishnan Sathish

NTU MSE Seminar Hosted by Professor Cho Nam-Joon

Abstract

The human brain contains roughly 100 billion neurons connected through more than 100 trillion synapses. Every thought, memory, movement, and sensation depends on the ability of these connections to exchange information with extraordinary speed and precision. At the heart of this process lies a remarkable materials problem: how can two biological membranes merge, exchange molecular information, and reset for the next round of communication in less than a millisecond?

Answering this question directly in living cells is challenging because neuronal communication emerges from thousands of interacting molecules operating across multiple length and time scales. Our approach has been to transform this biological problem into an engineering problem. By building programmable membrane interfaces from the bottom up, we reconstruct essential features of neuronal communication while maintaining precise control over every component.

Using these engineered systems, we have uncovered how nanoscale protein assemblies organize membrane fusion, how vesicles achieve the speed required for neuronal signaling, and how membrane architecture governs information transfer. Building on these discoveries, we are developing programmable vesicles, membrane reprogramming technologies, and responsive biointerfaces that enable control of cellular communication. Together, these studies reveal neuronal communication as an emergent property of programmable membrane materials and provide a framework for engineering next-generation bioinspired materials and therapeutic technologies.

Biography

Dr Ramakrishnan Sathish
Assistant Professor of Pathology
Yale School of Medicine

Dr. Ramakrishnan is an Assistant Professor of Pathology at Yale School of Medicine. His laboratory focuses on understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms of fusion proteins, which mediate a wide range of cellular processes, including hormone and neurotransmitter release, cell growth, cytokinesis, cancer signaling, progression, and onset. He and his colleagues quantitively dissect the role of SNAREs, and their regulators in normal and diseased conditions using engineered suspended lipid bilayer platforms and single-molecule imaging methods. Understanding the key players of exocytosis can drive therapeutic discovery by clarifying which proteins are critical for each step in the signaling pathway and block the disease progression.