•   When: Monday, July 27, 2015 from 11:00 AM to 01:00 PM
•   Speakers: Irina Hashmi
•   Location: Nguyen Engineering, Room 4801
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Abstract

Characterizing the three-dimensional structures of protein-protein assemblies, a problem known as protein-protein docking, is central to understanding the physical and structural bases of molecular interactions in cellular processes. Doing so can also provide useful insights in structure-function studies and the design of elective drugs. Despite significant contributions from wet-laboratory techniques, the number of high-resolution structures of protein assemblies characterized in the wet laboratory cover only a small fraction of possible interactions. Research in dry laboratories is vibrant but challenged by the complexity of molecular interactions. Predominantly, methods based on stochastic optimization are employed to handle the size and complexity of the space of possible placements of units in an assembly.

Despite significant work showing that knowledge of interaction interfaces can be valuable to guide docking methods, very few methods incorporate such information. Those that do are restricted to the setting of directly incorporating wet-lab macroscopic measurements,such as chemical shifts, which are hard to obtain on a variety of systems.