Publications related to Real-Time Monitoring of Protein Conformational Changes Using a Nano-Mechanical Sensor

From Sequence to Dynamics to Function: Computational Design of Allostery and Ligand Selectivity in G-Protein Coupled Receptors

The phenomenon of allostery, a general property in proteins that has been heralded as "the second secret of life" remains elusive to our understanding and even more challenging to incorporate into protein design. One example of allosteric proteins with gre ...

EPFL2024

Investigating the intra-molecular and inter-molecular effects of post-translational modifications on intrinsically disordered protein regions and structured protein regions

Zhidian Zhang

Post-translational modifications (PTMs) play a pivotal role in regulating protein structure, interaction, and function. Aberrant PTM patterns are associated with diseases. Moreover, individual PTMs have a complex interaction with each other, known as PTM c ...

EPFL2024

Predicting protein interactions using geometric deep learning on protein surfaces

Freyr Sverrisson

In the domain of computational structural biology, predicting protein interactions based on molecular structure remains a pivotal challenge. This thesis delves into this challenge through a series of interconnected studies. The first chapter introduces th ...

EPFL2024

Opportunities and challenges in design and optimization of protein function

Bruno Emanuel Ferreira De Sousa Correia, Casper Alexander Goverde

The field of protein design has made remarkable progress over the past decade. Historically, the low reliability of purely structure-based design methods limited their application, but recent strategies that combine structure-based and sequence-based calcu ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Microsecond Time-Resolved Cryo-Electron Microscopy

Oliver Florian Harder

Recently, single-particle cryo-electron microscopy emerged as a technique capable of determining protein structures at near-atomic resolution and resolving protein dynamics with a temporal resolution ranging from second to milliseconds. This thesis describ ...

EPFL2024

Towards improving full-length ribosome density prediction by bridging sequence and graph-based representations

Felix Naef, Pierre Vandergheynst, Cédric Gobet, Mohan Vamsi Nallapareddy, Francesco Craighero

Translation elongation plays an important role in regulating protein concentrations in the cell, and dysregulation of this process has been linked to several human diseases. In this study, we use data from ribo-seq experiments to model ribosome densities, ...

PMLR2024

Engineering novel protein interactions with therapeutic potential using deep learning-guided surface design

Anthony Marchand

Proteins are foundational biomolecules of life playing a crucial role in a myriad of biological processes. Their function often requires interplay with other biomolecules, including proteins themselves. Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) are essential for ...

EPFL2024

Synergetic Support of Cartilage Homeostasis via Coupled Thermal-Hydrostatic Pressure Stimuli

Yanheng Guo

Cartilage homeostasis, crucial for musculoskeletal function, is orchestrated by interconnected biophysical cues. In healthy cartilage, repetitive compressive loading not only elicits a range of mechanical stimuli but also induces a gradual transient temper ...

EPFL2024

Development of tools and methods for protein identification: From single molecules to in vivo applications

Salome Riccarda Püntener

As the fundamental machinery orchestrating cellular functions, proteins influence the state of every cell profoundly. As cells exhibit significant variations from one to another, analyzing the proteome on a single-cell level is imperative to unravel their ...

EPFL2024

Microsecond time-resolved cryo-electron microscopy

Ulrich Lorenz

Microsecond time-resolved cryo-electron microscopy has emerged as a novel approach for directly observing protein dynamics. By providing microsecond temporal and near-atomic spatial resolution, it has the potential to elucidate a wide range of dynamics tha ...

2024

Mechanisms and functions of protein S-acylation

Françoise Gisou van der Goot Grunberg, Laurence Gouzi Abrami, Francisco De Magalhães Sarmento R De Mesquita

Over the past two decades, protein S-acylation (often referred to as S-palmitoylation) has emerged as an important regulator of vital signalling pathways. S-Acylation is a reversible post-translational modification that involves the attachment of a fatty a ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Computational drug development for membrane protein targets

Henning Paul-Julius Stahlberg, Pierre Vogel, Shuguang Yuan, Dongchun Ni, Babatunde Edukpe Ekundayo

The application of computational biology in drug development for membrane protein targets has experienced a boost from recent developments in deep learning-driven structure prediction, increased speed and resolution of structure elucidation, machine learni ...

2024

Structural heterogeneity of the ion and lipid channel TMEM16F

Horst Vogel

Transmembrane protein 16 F (TMEM16F) is a Ca2+-activated homodimer which functions as an ion channel and a phospholipid scramblase. Despite the availability of several TMEM16F cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) structures, the mechanism of activation ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Recording physiological history of cells with chemical labeling

Kai Johnsson, Julien Hiblot, Ling Hai

Recordings of the physiological history of cells provide insights into biological processes, yet obtaining such recordings is a challenge. To address this, we introduce a method to record transient cellular events for later analysis. We designed proteins t ...

American Association for the Advancement of Science2024

Structure-function analysis of the cyclic β-1,2-glucan synthase from Agrobacterium tumefaciens

Henning Paul-Julius Stahlberg, Dongchun Ni

The synthesis of complex sugars is a key aspect of microbial biology. Cyclic beta-1,2-glucan (C beta G) is a circular polysaccharide critical for host interactions of many bacteria, including major pathogens of humans (Brucella) and plants (Agrobacterium). ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Ion Spectroscopy Reveals Structural Difference for Proteins Microhydrated by Retention and Condensation of Water

Oleg Boyarkine, Andrei Zviagin

Protein ubiquitin in its +7 charge state microhydrated by 5 and 10 water molecules has been interrogated in the gas phase by cold ion UV/IR spectroscopy. The complexes were formed either by condensing water onto the unfolded bare proteins in a temperature- ...

Amer Chemical Soc2024

A Geometric Transformer for Structural Biology: Development and Applications of the Protein Structure Transformer

Lucien Fabrice Krapp

Proteins, the central building blocks of life, play pivotal roles in nearly every biological function. To do so, these macromolecular structures interact with their surrounding environment in complex ways, leading to diverse functional behaviors. The predi ...

EPFL2023

Computational design of dynamic receptor—peptide signaling complexes applied to chemotaxis

Andreas Füglistaler, Aurélien Laurent Jean-Charles Oggier, Mahdi Hijazi, Patrick Daniel Barth, Robert Everett Jefferson, Ana Paola Rico Villarreal

Engineering protein biosensors that sensitively respond to specific biomolecules by triggering precise cellular responses is a major goal of diagnostics and synthetic cell biology. Previous biosensor designs have largely relied on binding structurally well ...

Nature Research2023

De novo designed proteins: a study in engineering novel folds and functions

Alexandra Krina Van Hall-Beauvais

Proteins control nearly every facet of life on a molecular level. Proteins are formed from linear strings of amino acids, which fold into three-dimensional structures that can enact functions. Evolution has created highly efficient proteins in diverse fold ...

EPFL2023

A new age in protein design empowered by deep learning

Bruno Emanuel Ferreira De Sousa Correia, Michael Bronstein, Casper Alexander Goverde, Ilia Igashov, Arne Schneuing, Hamed Khakzad

The rapid progress in the field of deep learning has had a significant impact on protein design. Deep learning methods have recently produced a breakthrough in protein structure prediction, leading to the availability of high-quality models for millions of ...

Cell Press2023