Native Protein Dynamics     

One of the central goals of our research is to develop novel computational techniques to model long-timescale fluctuations of proteins in their native state. A number of recent experimental works have demonstrated that such conformational fluctuations have a significant influence on the native function of many enzymes and signaling proteins. Recent successes in the field of protein folding indicate that complex biological phenomena may be modeled quantitatively using tools from polymer physics, spin glass theory, and bioinformatics. Similarly, we are developing an integrated system of multi-scale computational techniques, from very coarse-grained to all-atom models, to describe the native dynamics of various enzymes and signaling proteins.