Biophysics Lecture

Computational protein design is a transformative field with exciting prospects for advancing both basic science and translational medical research. My laboratory has developed protein design algorithms and used them to design new drugs for leukemia, to redesign an enzyme to diversify current antibiotics, to design protein-protein interactions, and to predict MRSA resistance mutations to new antibiotics. At the heart of this research are a family of provable algorithms of considerable intrinsic interest. I will introduce these algorithms for protein design. Then, I will discuss two applications: (1) designing drugs for cystic fibrosis, and (2) designing antibodies against HIV-1. Computational, and experimental (in vitro, and ex vivo) results will be presented.