Dr. Williams, Bill
Institution
1. Institute of Fundamental Sciences, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand.
2. The MacDiarmid Institute, Wellington, New Zealand.
Presentation day
Thursday 2:00 PM
TITLE
Sugar and spice: Natural biofunctional materials from self-assembling polysaccharides
Abstract
From the plant cell wall, whose mechanical properties are crucially important not only for
plant physiology, but also for human dietary health; to the carbohydrate strings that tie collagen fibrils
together in perfect register within the shape-modules that constitute the extracellular matrix of our skin and
cartilage, polysaccharides play a crucial, yet often under-appreciated role, in crafting the functional
bionanomaterials of the natural world.
In this talk we describe experimental results obtained from studies carried out across a range of length and
timescales, from stretching individual polysaccharides, through to monitoring their assemblies with each
other and with protein fibrils, and finally elucidating structure and dynamics in macroscopic biomimetic gels.
Such studies provide fascinating insights into how these hierachical materials are assmbled from the
bottom-up and hold the promise that by understanding Nature’s design rules we might learn to better
construct polysaccharide-based materials with designed properties.
CV
Bill Williams obtained an Honours degree in Physics with Astrophysics from Leeds University, UK and then undertook a PhD in NMR relaxation behaviour at the Open University. He went on to spend a number of years as a Postdoctoral Fellow in The Chemistry Department at York University, UK, working on various aspects of biological polymers. Subsequently he spent 4 years with Unilever Research, before returning to academia in March 2003, with a position in The Institute of Fundamental Sciences at Massey University, NZ, where he works on biophysics and soft-matter. Check out www.biophysics.ac.nz.
He was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry's Food Group Junior Medal in 2003, was Theme leader for the Soft Materials Theme of The MacDiarmid Institute Centre of Research Excellence for 6 years, and gave the Pilnik Lecture at the 2011 Hydrocolloids conference in Wageningen. Bill was elected onto the council of the International Union for Pure and Applied Biophysics in 2012, is a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Physics, and serves on the editorial boards of Biophysical Reviews and Food Hydrocolloids.
Literatures
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Mansel, B. W.; Chu, C.-Y.; Leis, A.; Hemar, Y.; Chen, H.-L.; Lundin, L.; Williams, M. A. K., Zooming in: Structural Investigations of Rheologically Characterized Hydrogen-Bonded Low-Methoxyl Pectin Networks. Biomacromolecules 2015, 16 (10), 3209-3216.
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ADDIN EN.REFLIST Xu, A. Y.; Melton, L. D.; Jameson, G. B.; Williams, M. A. K.; McGillivray, D. J., Structural mechanism of complex assemblies: characterisation of beta-lactoglobulin and pectin interactions. Soft Matter 2015, 11 (34), 6790-6799.