The Andresen Lab

We are an interdisciplinary lab housed in the Physics Department at Gettysburg College in historic Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

The electrostatic force is the major long-range force in biological systems. Our lab seeks to understand and utilize the electrostatic force in a variety of systems. We study everything from how nucleic acids (DNA, RNA, …) interact with each other and with proteins through electrostatics to how we can utilize electrostatics to help design therapeutic nanoparticles (for instance, biologically compatible gold nanoparticles).

Our current research uses a combination of inductively-coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES), Circular Dichroism, Isothermal Calorimetry, and other biophysical tools to study the electrostatics of these interesting and important systems.