LukemanLab - St. John's University Chemistry - Home

 

 

 

 

Biotechnology - Organic Chemistry - Nanoscience

Covalent Chemistry Control of Nucleic Acid Nanotechnology

                      Mesoscale Molecular Engineering

Welcome to the Lukeman Lab

News

    December 2023 Welcome to our new trainees: Elijah, Aohona and Julia!

    December 2023 Almost a long a gestation as the 2020 paper, * finally *, a preprint with co-authors from Caltech, Johns Hopkins, U Sherbrooke, UCSB, UCLA and MIT describing a first: a modular, easily adaptable, ultra-sensitive, highest-gain, regeneratable electrochemical biosensor using a “lily-pad” origami mechanism.

    Thanks to Army Research Office and St. John's for long-term support of this project. Hopefully coming to a snazzy journal venue near you soon.....

    June 2023 Stay tuned for a preprint on some orgiami electrochemical biosensing work! Any day now!

    May 2023  LukemanLab wins a $280k, 3 year, new ARO grant to study some fancy DNA electrochemical crosslinking technology! More on this soon.

    May 2022 Back to the lab!

    Jan 2022 Welcome to our new trainees, Nafisah, Yae Eun and Alex

    November 2021 RIP Ned Seeman

    The Maass Lab put it best:

    Ned Seeman passed away. His language was salty.
    He hated dress suits and loved root beer.
    He cared about people and even more about structural control of DNA.
    He combined creativity, aestheticism,
    ruthless control of his experiments
    and zero bullshit tolerance.
    Farewell, Ned.

    April 2021 After a COVID-induced hiatus, back to the lab!

    Jun 2020 The summation of 8 years of hard work! A paper published in Nanoscale

    In collaboration with UCSB, Johns Hopkins and Ohio State Chemists and Mechanical Engineers, we demonstrate the first DNA Origami electrochemical biosensor capable of recognizing virus-sized objects (and not their subunits!).

    We hope others run with this technology and make origami sing in real-world, clinically relevant detection of mesoscale analytes!

    Congrats to all involved but particularly Lukemanlab members: Alex, Muaz, Kate F, Natalie and Tammy for your kickass work!

    And thanks to ARO & St. John's for their support of a long gestating project!

    March 2020 Welp! We go virtual.

    Jan 2020 Welcome to our new lab trainees Maria and Jeremy!

    November 2019 Congrats to Kate, Natalie, Tammy, Phuong and Angela for their Bronze award at Biomod 2019! Project site

    June 2019 A paper with Lukeman as co-author is published in ACS Nano: ‘Designing Higher Resolution Self-Assembled 3D DNA Crystals via Strand Terminus Modifications’

    May 2019 Welcome to our new lab members, Phuong and Angela!

    April 2019   Lukeman presents a poster at  FNANO19

    April 2019  Alex, Muaz, Kate, Natalie and Tammy present a poster at St Johns Student research Month

    March 2019  LukemanLab wins a $225k, 3 year, new ARO grant to study the electrochemical behavior of DNA origami biosensors

    May 2018 Welcome to our new lab members, Natalie, Yekaterina and Tammy!

    Nov 2017 Congrats to Alison, Alex, Muaz, Carlotta & Chris for their Bronze award at Biomod 2017 Project site

    Sep 2017 Lukeman wins support for ARO and St John's for a Spring 2018 research leave to learn about electrochemical biosensors at UCSB in the lab of Kevin Plaxco

    May 2017 Welcome to our new Lab Members: Alison & Muaz!

    April 2017 Chris, Alex and Carlotta Present a poster at St. John's student research month

    May 2016. Welcome to our new Lab Members, Alex and Carlotta!

    April 2016 Lukeman presents a poster at FNANO16

    April 2016 LukemanLab wins a $150k, 3 year, new ARO grant to continue the “Claw” project!

    April 2016 Chris, Kate and Sydney Present a poster at St. John's student research month

    November 2015 The website UG Research Science and twitter account @UGresearch_sci launch: please visit and share info about best practices in undergraduate research mentoring. Twitter account is now personal, general account of Prof. Lukeman.

    November 2015 If you're here from my 2015 Nature Nanotechnology graduate training article : welcome!

    November 2015 Chris, Kate, Sydney and Eugene go on a rampage at BIOMOD 2015, winning a silver award. Congrats! Their wiki and video is here

    October 2015 Kate presents a poster authored by the group at the Active Materials Conference at CUNY ASRC ;
    She won one of the 4-best poster awards in a field of 38!

    The other winners were postdocs and Ph.D. students from these "no-name" institutions: Harvard and Johns Hopkins

    so congrats to our Master's student Kate and our undergraduate group for "slumming it"....



    May 2015. Welcome to our new Lab Member, Kate!

    April 2015. Sydney, Eugene and Chris present at St. John's student research month

    November 2014 Our latest publication is in Nucleic acid research. Well done Terry, and thanks to Paul and Diana for being such excellent collaborators!

    September 2014. Lukeman is now a Tenured Associate Professor at St. John's!
    Status: Nerd Level Alpha - obtained. ⚛⚛⚛⚛⚛

    Jun 2014. Lukeman presents a poster at CUR 2014

    May 2014. Welcome to our three new Lab Members Chris, Eugene & Sydney!

    May 2014. Moorsalin and Richard present talks at the ACS URS

    April 2014. Moorsalin, Mike and Richard Present a poster at St. John's student research month

    March 2014. LukemanLab wins a URAP supplement to their existing ARO grant

    January 2014. Our latest photocleavage control paper, 
"Photocleavage control of nucleated DNA nanosystems – the influence of surface strand sterics" 
is published in Nanoscale
    Congratulations to Morcos, Moorsalin, Nancy, Paul, Terry and Allen for your work bearing fruit at St. John's and CPP!


    November 2013 If you're here from my Nature Nanotechnology training article : welcome!
    To get an idea about what we are doing, look at the links below, particulary the Biomod links.
    Manual and Contract can be found on the Miscellaneous page. I welcome feedback and dialog about training undergraduates in science!

    November 2013 Matt, Keshia, Moorsalin, Mike and Richard go on a rampage at BIOMOD 2013, winning a gold award.
    See our BIOMOD PAGE
    See our Youtube Video

    June 2013 Our latest paper, "Hetero-oligonucleotide nanoscale tiles capable of two-dimensional lattice formation as testbeds for a rapid, affordable purification methodology" is published in Nanoscale.

    May 2013 Welcome two new members to the lab, Moorsalin and Richard!

    May 2013 Lukeman presents a poster at the Supramolecular Chemistry Gordon Research Conference

    April 2013 Lukeman presents a poster at FNANO 2013 Conference

    April 2013 Matt presents a seminar on his project at the New York ACS undergraduate research symposium

    April 2013 Keshia, Mike & Morcos present a poster on their projects at St. John's University research day

    March 2013 Lukeman has a Review published in V.A. Erdmann and J. Barciszewski (eds.), DNA and RNA Nanobiotechnologies in Medicine: Diagnosis and Treatment of Diseases, Springer, entitled 'Nucleic Acid Nanotechnology: Modified Backbones and Topological Polymer Templates'

    May 2012: Welcome to our 5 new lab members: John, Keshia, Matt, Mike and Morcos!

    Jan 2012: Lab is up and running! Our new trainees are getting stuck in.

    Jun 2011: Lukeman accepts the position of Associate Professor of Chemistry at St Johns University , in Queens, NY.
    LukemanLab moves in August and begins work in September 2011.

    May 2011: LukemanLab wins a $360k, 3 year ARO Standard grant

    Feb 2011: Our first paper, authored solely by Lukeman & Cal Poly Pomona undergrads, entitled
    
"Positional photocleavage control of DNA-based nanoswitches" 
is published in Chemical 
Communications
    Congratulations Allen, Nancy & Paul!.


    Dec 2010: If you're here from Mindshare, welcome! There are some links to other labs that do DNA nano in the "Links section"
    A nice intro to what's coming up in DNA origami is here.
    If you liked the spiel that I gave and want to contact me for other art-tech-sci interactions/consulting/speaking opportunities
    my email is phil.lukeman@gmail.com (the graphic @ is to foil the dreaded spammers).

    Jun 2010: Welcome to our 2 new undergrad lab members: Terry Huang and Paul Chung

    May 2010: Allen wins best undergraduate chemistry researcher at the Cal Poly Chemistry Goldstein Student awards. Congrats!

    April 2010: Allen presents at Cal Poly Chemistry Goldstein Student awards and at FNANO2010.

    Jun 2009: Welcome to our 4 new undergrad lab members: Nancy Kedzierski, Adam Loukeh, Allen Mok and Lisa Mousselli.
    Allen gets a good start by winning a CCRAA Research Apprenticeship award!

    May 2009: Lukeman wins a $42k Cottrell College Science Award

    April 2009: Vik goes on a presentation rampage. Finallist presenter at the Cal Poly Chemistry Goldstein Student awards.
    Presents a poster at FNANO 2009. Represents Cal Poly at the inter-CSU Student Research competition.

    February 2009: Lukeman awarded a $15k CSUPERB Faculty-Student Collaborative Research Seed Grant

    January 2009: Congratulations to Lit Ming and Vik for winning CCRAA Research Apprenticeship Awards!

    November 2008: Our undergraduate student Vik Presents his work at the Southern California Conference for Undergraduate Research (SCCUR)
    Seminar title "Controlling the function of a DNA actuator"

    October 2008: Our undergraduate student Vik Presents his work at the Cal Poly Summer Research Symposium
    Seminar title "Controlling the function of a DNA actuator"

    June 2008 : Paper accepted to Biophysical Journal
    "Metallic Nanoparticles Used to Estimate the Structural Integrity of DNA Motifs"
    Zheng J, Lukeman PS, Sherman WB, Micheel C, Alivasatos AP, Constantinou PE, Seeman NC.

    April 2008 : Undergraduate and High School student co-authored poster presented at FNANO 2008, Snowbird, UT
    "Training Tyros with Tiny Tinkertoys", Lukeman PS et al.

    March 2008: Lukeman awarded the Cal Poly Pomona Provost’s Teacher-Scholar award.
    This award provides funding for two consecutive summers to support faculty development as a strong teacher-scholar.

    February 2008 : Paper accepted to ChemBioChem
    "Thermodynamic Analysis of Nylon Nucleic Acids" Ding L, Liu Y, Sha R, Lukeman PS, Canary JW, Seeman NC.

    January 2008: Undergraduate co-author paper accepted to Crystal Growth and Design
    "Morphology Change of Calcium Carbonate in the Presence of Polynucleotides" Lukeman PS, Stevenson M, Seeman NC.

Positions available

The LukemanLab is open to applicants from eager St. John's undergraduate and master's students.
We also accept dedicated high school students from the local area.

Contact Lukeman to be put on a waiting list.