Research Interests
Computational method development for membrane protein structure prediction in the Rosetta software (2012 - current):
- one of the core developers of membrane code in Rosetta
- implemented RosettaMP, a new framework for modeling membrane proteins in Rosetta, that greatly facilitates development of a variety of new protocols
- based on this framework, development of new applications for modeling, docking, and design with and without the use of experimental restraints
- specific interests: protein-protein docking within the membrane bilayer, predicting the effect of mutations onto membrane protein structure and function, high-resolution refinement of large membrane proteins, ligand docking, etc.
Computational and experimental method development for membrane protein structure determination (PhD at Vanderbilt):
- secondary structure prediction and prediction of trans-membrane spans: BCL::Jufo9D
- derived a Unified Hydrophobicity Scale from a knowledge-base of protein structures
- used lanthanide-binding tags to measure paramagnetic NMR restraints on membrane proteins, such as Residual Dipolar Couplings, Paramagnetic Relaxation Enhancements, Pseudo-Contact Shifts