University of Groningen
Supercharged proteins and polypeptides for advanced materials in chemistry and biology
Ma, Chao
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Publication date: 2019
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Ma, C. (2019). Supercharged proteins and polypeptides for advanced materials in chemistry and biology. University of Groningen.
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Acknowledgements
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It is not easy to accomplish a PhD study. However, it is very lucky for me to meet many talented people during the past several years and work with them. Now it is right the moment to acknowledge their great help and express my warm appreciation to those of whom I share wonderful memory with in my PhD career. First of all, I would like to express my sincere and largest gratitude to my promotor Prof. Andreas Herrmann. Andreas, thank you so much for offering me the great opportunity to perform my PhD study in PCBE group at Groningen. Many special thanks for introducing me to the fantastic supercharged proteins research community. You are the best mentor, not only because of your amazing ideas, broad knowledge and diligent attitude in scientific researches, but also due to your kind guidance, firm support, encouragement and trust to my work. You gave me sufficient freedom to carry out the study and also assisted me to build up the framework of my researches. I really love the cross-disciplinary atmosphere in our lab. I also enjoy many great collaborations with other labs around the world. You gave me lots of accesses to important seminars and conferences where I can present my studies to the community and absorb in other exciting talks. I really appreciate your patience and large amounts of time you spent on the results analysis and manuscripts revision. Your enthusiasm on science is inspiring from which I have learnt a lot and I will for sure cherish this experience in my life.
The work in this thesis and many related publications could not have been possible without valuable contributions from many people. My special thanks to Prof. Kai Liu. Kai, I am sincerely grateful to have opportunities to work together with you. Your sharp mind and perseverance in scientific study inspires me so much. The works with you in fields of soft materials, mechanics and neuron science hugely broaden my vision and strengthen my expertise, particularly using recently developed supercharged proteins systems. I hope we can work intensely in future to obtain more achievements. I wish you and your family all the best. I would like to thank Prof. Giuseppe Portale. Giuseppe, it is amazing to collaborate with your group on mechanics and protonic device study. Having discussions on the results with you is always constructive and fruitful and I really learnt a lot. You also showed your expertise on X-ray in our study and helped me understand the SAXS, WAXS data we collected. I am very glad for the work we had together and hope we can have more collaborations in future. I owe thanks to Prof. Can (Martin) Zhang for your help to work in the field of neuron science. I am grateful to you for the valuable discussions on the project. Your comments helped a lot to improve my scientific work. I also like to thank Prof. Jianjun Wang for your continuous support
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in the ice nucleation project. I am very grateful to Prof. Uwe Bunz and Prof. Jinsong Han for the fruitful and productive collaborations. I would like to thank Prof. Mauri Kostiainen for your input and support in the joint program.
I would like to thank Dr. Evgeny Polushkin for your invaluable assistance to work on rheology and AFM measurements. The cover of this thesis is designed based on a photograph you captured via AFM. Thank you very much for your contribution. I am also grateful to Mark Loznik for your help in chemicals ordering and polishing my Dutch summary. I would like to acknowledge Dr. Marc Stuart for your training and help on TEM. I also like to thank Albert Woortman and Jur van Dijken for your kind training of POM, TGA and Instron device.
I thank my co-supervisor, Prof. Patrick van Rijn. We met a few times a year, but you were always supportive and encouraging to me. I also like to thank the reading committee, Prof. D. J. Slotboom, Prof. H. Boerner and Prof. U. Schwaneberg for reviewing my thesis. Thank you for the comments and suggestions, which have definitely helped to improve this thesis. Moreover, I want to express my great gratitude to Prof. Katja Loos. Thanks a lot for your permission and offering me many opportunities to perform tests in polymer lab. I also like to thank Prof. Minseok Kwak and Dr. Arnold Boersma for your kind contribution in the perspective paper.
In my PhD career, I had several chances to supervise five students and their contribution greatly facilitated my work. Stefanus Nelson Anwar, Ronald van der Meulen, Sander Annema, Johan Zijlstra and Renee Bensdorp, thank you for your hard work in the projects we performed together. It was my pleasure working with you and wish you all the best in the future! Gratitude to Ronald and Renee, thanks for your time to improve my samenvatting.
My special thanks to all my colleagues, the members of PCBE group and polymer chemistry department. Dear colleagues, thank you so much to make my stay in Groningen a wonderful experience. Ursula and Karin, thank you for all administrative work. Lifei, captain of our football dream team, thank you for organizing. Many thanks for enlightening discussions and suggestions in academic topics and wish you all the best in Aachen. Jan Willem, it was really a nice trip with you heading to Tübingen and working on the pig’s eyes project. Good luck for your career in industry. Alessio, you impressed me a lot when you showed your skills in computer science. I hope you can achieve new breakthroughs in computational
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genomics. Bart, thanks for your help in training me to work on cell culture. Avishek, my old buddy, how time flies. I am very happy to work with you at the bio-lab and sit side by side at the office. You are smart and I hope you can get your Nature papers soon. Jing, it is my great pleasure to work with you. Thanks for your efforts and wish you and your family all the best. Eliza, thank you for broad scientific discussions in the office. Wish you a nice career in UMCG. Jingjing, thanks a lot for assisting me arrange the X-ray settings. Rui, I enjoyed a lot being officemate with you and wish your career goes very well. Valentina, good luck for your work in Zernike and UMCG. Nicola, I really appreciate your contribution on protein 3D plots. Thank you very much. Marco, thank you for helping arranging the electrochemistry stuff and wish you proceeds well in your PhD work. Yu, thanks for your help on protein expression and purification. Anton, thanks for driving us to the DPD workshop. Wish you success in your new career at Zernike. Thank you Yang Feng, for helping me compile the animal data. Lei, Jun & Pei, Wei, Tiancai, Shuaidong, Xintong, Miancheng, Pengkun, Jingyi & Shuo, Qing & Meng, Gurudas, Konstantin, Hongyan, Hongping, Agnieszka, Diego, Pavlo, Jin, Issota, Chongnan, Qi, Zhiwen, Yichen, Xu Yang, Liqiang, Gang Xiang, Jielin, Baojie, Xiaotian, Xiaohong, Dina, Azis, Aldo, Masyitha and Milad, thank you all for good time during work and at conferences. Special thanks to Xiaoming, Huatang, Gang Huang, Zhenchen, Boqun, Haojie and other friends in the football team. I enjoyed a lot having fun with you guys. Thank Xuewen, Keni and Wenxuan for badminton time. Thank newly arrived Prof. Marleen Kamperman, thank you for keeping a pleasant work atmosphere. I would like to thank Eliza and Jingjing once more for your contribution as my paranymphs. Thank you very much for helping me arrange the defense ceremony!
Finally and most importantly, I want to express my warmest gratitude to my family. 感谢爸爸妈妈对我攻读博士的支持和鼓励。没有你们无穷的支持，我无法想 象能走完博士学业的道路。父母之爱，大爱无疆。谁言寸草心，报得三春晖！ 感谢我的爱人李昕博士，感谢你对我的关怀和鼓舞。这几年尽管事业上很苦， 但是精神上我们互相劝勉，相濡以沫。琴瑟和鸣，感谢有你。感谢小斌舅舅， 感谢您对我自高考以来在职业道路上的一路关怀，谢谢您的鼓励，祝您和您 的家人幸福美满。
