The Keating research group has several interdisciplinary research themes in the general areas of physical chemistry, colloid and interface science, biological chemistry and materials:
(1) Self-assembled artificial cells/Cytomimetic chemistry, with an emphasis on experimental model systems for subcellular microcompartmentalization. We study liquid-liquid phase coexistence in aqueous macromolecule solutions, where each phase serves as a distinct microenvironment that can favor reactions such as enzyme cascades, ribozyme reactions, or bioinspired mineralization.
(2) Prebiotic compartmentalization. We are investigating how the accumulation of prebiotic organic molecules by liquid-liquid phase separation, or coacervation, may have impacted the subsequent oligomerization, self-assembly, and activity of those molecules. Areas of interest include ribozyme compartmentalization in complex coacervates formed by mixing oppositely-charged polyelectrolytes, lipid self-assembly in the presence of coacervates, and the impact of environmental conditions on coacervate physical chemistry.
(3) Bioinspired materials synthesis. Here, we are studying the formation and properties of composite inorganic/organic materials in reaction microenvironments that are pre-organized by reagent and catalyst partitioning across several coexisting aqueous phases.
(4) Self- and directed assembly of particles, with an emphasis on bridging top-down and bottom-up fabrication approaches for multicomponent functional structures. Our target structures at present have optical functions ranging from random lasers to metamaterials and are designed to enable reorganization of particles for switchable optical response.
