SCIENCE AT THE EDGE SEMINAR

Friday, October 27 at 11:30am
Room 1400 Biomedical and Physical Sciences Bldg.
Refreshments at 11:15

Speaker: Julie Mitchell
         Departments of Mathematics and Biochemistry
         University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706
        
Title:   Predicting Protein Interfaces and Binding Hot Spots

Abstract:

Protein interfaces can be studied in terms of both prediction and
design. Recent progress on clustering and optimization schemes for
docking demonstrates that native solutions can be predicted more reliably
by searching for cluster global minima, as compared with a single global
minimum.

Once bound structures can be reliably predicted, or are known from
experiment, one can ask how to tweak binding affinity and specificity.
Strategies for predicting "hot spot" residues in interfaces are used
toward protein design. The prediction methods are derived using prior
knowledge of the biophysical and geometric environment surrounding 60 hot
spot residues, along with alanine mutagenesis data.