Sprecher
Beschreibung
Alena Khmelinskaia
Recent computational methods have been developed for designing novel protein assemblies with atomic-level accuracy. Yet, when compared to their natural counterparts, the structural and functional space covered by de novo designed assemblies remains limited. I will share with you our ongoing nature-inspired efforts in diversifying the structural repertoire of protein assemblies and developing strategies to dynamically control protein assembly state. First, I will describe our approaches to diversify assembly geometries beyond simple polyhedral geometries, such as linked architectures assembled from rigid building blocks following quasi-equivalence principles. Then, I will present our generalizable interface-seeded design pipeline for the generation of environemnt responsive oligomers driven by ion-mediate, small molecule-dependent or phosphorylation-triggered protein-protein interfaces. Finally, I will discuss our approach to the design miniaturized building-blocks capable of satisfying multiple structural and functional constraints. By leveraging novel architectures and a diversity of endogenous and exogenous signals, we aim to generate minimal orthogonal and programmable control elements for synthetic biology.