Madhavan Nallani

• The functionalized nanocompartment system, Synthosome, has been developed for putative biotechnological applications. A Synthosome is a hollow sphere consisting of a mechanically stable vesicle with a block copolymer membrane and an engineered transmembrane protein acting as the selective gate. Among other functions, the interior contains an enzyme catalyzing a reaction or a charged macromolecule species as trap for compounds. Two areas of application were targeted as proof of principle: A) Selective product recovery in nanocompartments and B) Enzymatic conversion in nanocompartments. Selective recovery of negatively charged compounds has been achieved in the example of sulforhodamine B by using positively charged polylysine molecules as a trap inside the nanocompartment. Conversion in nanocompartments has been achieved by 3,3',5,5'-tetramethylbenzidine oxidation employing horseradish peroxidase (HRP). In the second part of this thesis, the encapsulation of nanophosphor particles in Synthosomes for selective recovery of single stranded DNA is reported. The nanophosphors based FRET system presents to our knowledge the first use of polymer vesicles for monitoring DNA translocation through a polymer mimic of a biological membrane. Four channel proteins (OmpF, FhuA and two engineered FhuA variants) were investigated by time resolved fluorescence (TRF) measurements for their ability to translocated single stranded DNA.