Diego López Barreiro
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dlopezbarreiro.bsky.social
Diego López Barreiro
@dlopezbarreiro.bsky.social
Lecturer in Chemical Engineering at @ucl.ac.uk. Principal Investigator at the @LBgroup.bsky.social. Protein biopolymers & other biobased materials.
Web: theLBgroup.github.io
Opinions are my own. He/him.
Hello darkness, my old friend 😱
July 16, 2025 at 5:28 PM
Reposted by Diego López Barreiro
We're hiring for 2 postdocs to work in our lab in London on the newly announced Wellcome Trust SynHG project. If you know people looking to work on big-scale ambitious science like this, please RT and share this with them. Apply by 7/20, interviews in Aug. imperial.ac.uk/jobs/search-...
June 30, 2025 at 2:34 PM
Last Friday we celebrated the 7th meeting of the UCL Cross-disciplinary Network on Soft Materials. It was great to see so many researchers across the university presenting their work on such a wide range of topics.
June 2, 2025 at 1:25 PM
Reposted by Diego López Barreiro
My dept in London at Imperial (Bioengineering) is recruiting a group leader at Professor level 🧑‍🎓 Please RT. It's a great place with world-class expertise in all sorts of biomedical & biological engineering topics like synthetic biology. It's also not in the USA. www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs/search-...
May 2, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Reposted by Diego López Barreiro
🌳How do trees ensure their branches are not blown off by the wind, and can we harness this for 3D-printed structures?

Caroline's paper explores how wavy fibre patterns inspired by trees can toughen 3D-printed materials.🪴

Check it out! #3DPrinting #Bioinspired #MaterialsScience #PlantScience ~IN
April 3, 2025 at 12:59 PM
I’ve been reading PhD applications all day. >90% include the expressions “academic journey” and “skills honed”. ChatGPT, you need to become way more creative and put an end to this.
January 27, 2025 at 9:39 PM
Just a few days left to apply to these two PhD opportunities at @uclengineering.bsky.social. More details below. Please help us spread the word! 🙏
Hi! We have two very interesting PhD opportunities in our lab 🦠🧬🔬. Find more information and the application links below! 👇
January 20, 2025 at 8:53 AM
We have two PhD opportunities in the lab, take a look below!
Hi! We have two very interesting PhD opportunities in our lab 🦠🧬🔬. Find more information and the application links below! 👇
January 9, 2025 at 5:37 PM
We published a paper.
We also created an account for the group.
Not a bad ending to 2024 😀
Hello world! Our first experimental publication is out 🙂

Check the link below to understand how we tuned the viscoelasticity of silk-elastin-like polypeptides (SELPs) hydrogels without modifying their amino acid sequence. It's all in the β-sheets!

bit.ly/3VKVeZR
Order–Disorder Balance in Silk-Elastin-like Polypeptides Determines Their Self-Assembly into Hydrogel Networks
The biofabrication of recombinant structural proteins with a range of mechanical or structural features usually relies on the generation of protein libraries displaying variations in terms of amino acid composition, block structure, molecular weight, or physical/chemical cross-linking sites. This approach, while highly successful in generating a wealth of knowledge regarding the links between design features and material properties, has some inherent limitations related to its low throughput. This slows down the pace of the development of de novo recombinant structural proteins. Here, we propose an approach to tune the viscoelastic properties of temperature-responsive hydrogels made of silk-elastin-like polypeptides (SELPs) without modifying their sequence. To do so, we subject purified SELPs to two different postprocessing methods─water annealing or EtOH annealing─that alter the topology of highly disordered SELP networks via the formation of ordered intermolecular β-sheet physical cross-links. Combining different analytical techniques, we connect the order/disorder balance in SELPs with their gelling behavior. Furthermore, we show that introducing a functional block (in this case, a biomineralizing peptide) in the sequence of SELPs can disrupt its self-assembly and that such disruption can only be overcome by EtOH annealing. Our results suggest that postprocessing of as-purified SELPs might be a simple approach to tune the self-assembly of SELPs into biomaterials with bespoke viscoelastic properties beyond the traditional approach of developing SELP libraries via genetic engineering.
pubs.acs.org
December 17, 2024 at 8:51 AM
Reposted by Diego López Barreiro
December 12, 2024 at 10:19 PM
Reposted by Diego López Barreiro
TWO PhD opportunities to join my group on the new CDT in Engineering Solutions for Antimicrobial Resistance!

Synthetic cells and DNA nanotechnology 🧬🦠🧑‍🔬
- Project details below

Open Day 18th December 11 am

Application Deadline 26th January 2025

#chemsky 🧪
www.findaphd.com/phds/program...
FindAPhD : 10 fully funded 4-year PhD studentships at the EPSRC and BBSCR Centre for Doctoral Training in Engineering Solutions for Antimicrobial Resistance at University College London
Apply for a PhD: 10 fully funded 4-year PhD studentships at the EPSRC and BBSCR Centre for Doctoral Training in Engineering Solutions for Antimicrobial Resistance at University College London
www.findaphd.com
December 2, 2024 at 10:45 AM
The CDT in Engineering Solutions for Antimicrobial Resistance is recruiting its 2025 cohort. Jack Jeffries and I have the perfect project for you. Join us to develop the next generation of antimicrobial materials!

More info: www.findaphd.com/phds/program...

➡️ Application deadline: 26/01/25
December 2, 2024 at 11:22 AM