About

Amal Narayanan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Florida. His research focuses on translating fundamental discoveries in the cellular states of matter into the development of new human-health-centric technologies using synthetic polymers. His lab aims to learn new biology, synthesize advanced polymer materials, and discover emergent physical phenomena. The main areas of his research include biomimicry with minimal polymer designs, interfacing synthetic polymers with cellular biomacromolecules, and developing quantitative frameworks with imaging and high-throughput polymer designs. Dr. Narayanan's educational background includes a B.S. and M.S. in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata, a Ph.D. in Polymer Science from The University of Akron, and postdoctoral research at Princeton University in Chemical and Biological Engineering. His work has been recognized with awards such as the HHMI LSRF Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Alan Gent Award. His research contributions include studies on coacervate dense phases displacing biofilms, tuning multiphase condensate miscibility through oligomerization, and self-coacervation of nonionic polyester underwater adhesives.

Research topics

• Materials science
• Organic chemistry
• Chemical engineering
• Nanotechnology
• Computer Science
• Composite material
• Chemistry
• Oceanography
• Chromatography
• Polymer chemistry
• Biomedical engineering
• Geology

Selected publications

• Design of de novo nucleolar surface proteins

  Biophysical Journal · 2025-12-03

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Asymmetric oligomerization state and sequence patterning can tune multiphase condensate miscibility

  Nature Chemistry · 2024-02-21 · 86 citations

  articleOpen access

  Endogenous biomolecular condensates, composed of a multitude of proteins and RNAs, can organize into multiphasic structures with compositionally distinct phases. This multiphasic organization is generally understood to be critical for facilitating their proper biological function. However, the biophysical principles driving multiphase formation are not completely understood. Here we use in vivo condensate reconstitution experiments and coarse-grained molecular simulations to investigate how oligomerization and sequence interactions modulate multiphase organization in biomolecular condensates. We demonstrate that increasing the oligomerization state of an intrinsically disordered protein results in enhanced immiscibility and multiphase formation. Interestingly, we find that oligomerization tunes the miscibility of intrinsically disordered proteins in an asymmetric manner, with the effect being more pronounced when the intrinsically disordered protein, exhibiting stronger homotypic interactions, is oligomerized. Our findings suggest that oligomerization is a flexible biophysical mechanism that cells can exploit to tune the internal organization of biomolecular condensates and their associated biological functions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Coacervate Dense Phase Displaces Surface-Established <i>Pseudomonas aeruginosa</i> Biofilms

  Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2024-09-11 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  For millions of years, barnacles and mussels have successfully adhered to wet rocks near tide-swept seashores. While the chemistry and mechanics of their underwater adhesives are being thoroughly investigated, an overlooked aspect of marine organismal adhesion is their ability to remove underlying biofilms from rocks and prepare clean surfaces before the deposition of adhesive anchors. Herein, we demonstrate that nonionic, coacervating synthetic polymers that mimic the physicochemical features of marine underwater adhesives remove ∼99% of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) biofilm biomass from underwater surfaces. The efficiency of biofilm removal appears to align with the compositional differences between various bacterial biofilms. In addition, the surface energy influences the ability of the polymer to displace the biofilm, with biofilm removal efficiency decreasing for surfaces with lower surface energies. These synthetic polymers weaken the biofilm–surface interactions and exert shear stress to fracture the biofilms grown on surfaces with diverse surface energies. Since bacterial biofilms are 1000-fold more tolerant to common antimicrobial agents and pose immense health and economic risks, we anticipate that our unconventional approach inspired by marine underwater adhesion will open a new paradigm in creating antibiofilm agents that target the interfacial and viscoelastic properties of established bacterial biofilms.

  PublisherDOI

• Asymmetric oligomerization state and sequence patterning can tune multiphase condensate miscibility

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2023-03-12 · 18 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Abstract Endogenous biomolecular condensates, comprised of a multitude of proteins and RNAs, can organize into multiphasic structures, with compositionally-distinct phases. This multiphasic organization is generally understood to be critical for facilitating their proper biological function. However, the biophysical principles driving multiphase formation are not completely understood. Here, we utilize in vivo condensate reconstitution experiments and coarse-grained molecular simulations to investigate how oligomerization and sequence interactions modulate multiphase organization in biomolecular condensates. We demonstrate that increasing the oligomerization state of an intrinsically disordered protein region (IDR) results in enhanced immiscibility and multiphase formation. Interestingly, we found that oligomerization tunes the miscibility of IDRs in an asymmetric manner, with the effect being more pronounced when the IDR exhibiting stronger homotypic IDR interactions is oligomerized. Our findings suggest that oligomerization is a flexible biophysical mechanism which cells can exploit to tune the internal organization of biomolecular condensates and their associated biological functions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Multiphasic Coacervates Assembled by Hydrogen Bonding and Hydrophobic Interactions

  Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2023-10-11 · 48 citations

  article

  Coacervation has emerged as a prevalent mechanism to compartmentalize biomolecules in living cells. Synthetic coacervates help in understanding the assembly process and mimic the functions of biological coacervates as simplified artificial systems. Though the molecular mechanism and mesoscopic properties of coacervates formed from charged coacervates have been well investigated, the details of the assembly and stabilization of nonionic coacervates remain largely unknown. Here, we describe a library of coacervate-forming polyesteramides and show that the water-tertiary amide bridging hydrogen bonds and hydrophobic interactions stabilize these nonionic, single-component coacervates. Analogous to intracellular biological coacervates, these coacervates exhibit "liquid-like" features with low viscosity and low interfacial energy, and form coacervates with as few as five repeating units. By controlling the temperature and engineering the molar ratio between hydrophobic interaction sites and bridging hydrogen bonding sites, we demonstrate the tuneability of the viscosity and interfacial tension of polyesteramide-based coacervates. Taking advantage of the differences in the mesoscopic properties of these nonionic coacervates, we engineered multiphasic coacervates with core-shell architectures similar to those of intracellular biological coacervates, such as nucleoli and stress granule-p-body complexes. The multiphasic structures produced from these synthetic nonionic polyesteramide coacervates may serve as a valuable tool for investigating physicochemical principles deployed by living cells to spatiotemporally control cargo partitioning, biochemical reaction rates, and interorganellar signal transport.

  PublisherDOI

• Oligomerization and sequence patterning can tune multiphasic condensate miscibility

  Biophysical Journal · 2023-02-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Immobilization of Glucose Oxidase on pH-Responsive Polyimide-Polyacrylic Acid Smart Membranes Fabricated Using 248 nm KrF Excimer Laser for Drug Delivery

  Biointerface Research in Applied Chemistry · 2022-01-18 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access

  The permeability of polyimide–polyacrylic acid (PI-PAAc) pH-responsive membrane fabricated using a 248 nm KrF laser was investigated. These membranes were further immobilized with glucose oxidase enzyme, which led to the successful development of a glucose-responsive membrane. The base PI membranes were developed using a simple photolithographic technique. Further grafting of PAAc inside the pores was carried out using the same laser wavelength. The effect of various solution parameters and laser parameters were studied and discussed in detail in our previous work. A variety of grafting yields were obtained by changing laser exposure time. Glucose Oxidase (GOD) enzyme was then immobilized on the membrane using a carbodiimide-based amidation method. The polyacrylic acid grafted inside the pores shows pH-responsive gating. The immobilized GOD molecules show glucose sensitivity and convert the glucose into gluconic acid. The experiment results show that these membranes can detect the amount of glucose and release the corresponding solute amount.

  PublisherDOI

• Interfacial Interactions of Bioinspired Underwater Adhesives

  Bulletin of the American Physical Society · 2021-03-17

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Cooperative Multivalent Weak and Strong Interfacial Interactions Enhance the Adhesion of Mussel-Inspired Adhesives

  Macromolecules · 2021-06-03 · 23 citations

  article1st author

  Inspired by the strong adhesion of mussel byssal threads to surfaces, the incorporation of 3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (DOPA) in polymer architecture has become a popular strategy to improve the adhesion of the polymers. There are numerous literature reports of this bioinspired method to improve the adhesion performance of polymers. However, the mechanism behind the success of DOPA-based adhesion continues to be a puzzle as decoupling the contribution of interfacial adhesion to the alteration in chemistry is experimentally challenging. Herein, we designed mussel-inspired elastomers with four different functionalities to test the importance of aromatic and hydroxyl groups in determining the adhesion performance. With a combination of adhesion measurements, surface-sensitive spectroscopy, and molecular dynamics simulations, we show that the aromatic groups form weak multivalent acid–base interactions with the surface hydroxyl groups on sapphire. Also, the interaction of both phenyl (weak acid–base interaction) and −OH groups (strong acid–base interaction) of DOPA with sapphire −OH groups increases the adhesion of DOPA-based polymers compared to polymer analogs functionalized with either phenylalanine (only aromatic), serine (only hydroxyl), or tyrosine (aromatic and one hydroxyl) groups. Thus, this study illustrates the importance of both strong and weak acid–base interactions in enhancing adhesion.

  PublisherDOI

• Light-Activated Adhesion and Debonding of Underwater Pressure-Sensitive Adhesives

  ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces · 2021-06-10 · 36 citations

  article

  Pressure-sensitive adhesives (PSAs) such as sticky notes and labels are a ubiquitous part of modern society. PSAs with a wide range of peel adhesion strength are designed by tailoring the bulk and surface properties of the adhesive. However, designing an adhesive with strong initial adhesion but showing an on-demand decrease in adhesion has been an enduring challenge in the design of PSAs. To address this challenge, we designed alkoxyphenacyl-based polyurethane (APPU) PSAs that show a photoactivated increase and decrease in peel strength. With increasing time of light exposure, the failure mode of our PSAs shifted from cohesive to adhesive failure, providing residue-free removal with up to 83% decrease in peel strength. The APPU-PSAs also adhere to substrates submerged underwater and show a similar photoinduced decrease in adhesion strength.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Abraham Joy

  21 shared

• Ali Dhinojwala

  13 shared

• Qianhui Liu

  National University of Singapore

  10 shared

• Clifford P. Brangwynne

  Princeton University

  7 shared

• Sukhmanjot Kaur

  6 shared

• Priyadarsi De

  Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata

  5 shared

• Joshua Menefee

  University of Akron

  5 shared

• José L. Avalos‬

  4 shared

Education

• Doctor of Philosophy, Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering

  University of Akron

  2021

• MS, Department of Chemical Sciences

  Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata - Mohanpur Campus

  2015

Awards & honors

• HHMI LSRF Postdoctoral Fellowship (2022)
• Alan Gent Award (2021)