Protein ligand interactions play an important role in biology and in order to influence this process in a targeted way increased understanding is necessary. The binding process is heavily influenced by its thermodynamic parameters. While the overall change in enthalpy can be easily measured using isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) and the change in entropy and Gibbs free enthalpy then...
Protein solution undergoes a re-entrant phase transition from one-phase to two-phase and then back to the one-phase in the presence of tri and tetravalent counterions [1]. Tri and tetravalent (unlike mono and divalent) counterions induce short-range attraction between the protein molecules, leading to the transformation from one-phase to two-phase system. The excess condensation of these...
Proteins play a crucial role in many biological processes. For example, all chemical reactions in living cells are accelerated by many orders of magnitude by enzymes, which are proteins that are responsible for catalyzing selectively one specific chemical reaction. Proton transfer is a fundamental mechanism at the core of many enzyme-catalyzed reactions. That is why the knowledge of...
A thorough understanding of protein interactions in aqueous solutions is crucial for many areas of research in soft matter and biology. For example, a strong interprotein attraction can lead to protein aggregation, which is observed in several pathologies such as cataract and neurodegenerative diseases.
We have shown that a patchy particle model can describe the phase behavior of a system of...
Protein-polymer interactions are a key point to understand and improve the activity of proteins and polymer in many bio related applications. Polyethylene glycol (PEG) is a widely used bio compatible polymer with applications reaching from antifouling, over crystallization helper to PEGylation of therapeutic drugs. Neutron scattering is an ideal method to examine protein PEG interactions...
Elastin-like polypeptides (ELPs) are versatile responsive biopolymers used in a range of biomedical applications such as drug delivery, protein purification and tissue engineering in the last decade. ELPs mimic a hydrophobic amino acid repeat segments of elastin which is a key protein of the extracellular matrix, and provides elastic properties to biological tissues – such as lung and...
Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are a class of proteins that do not have a defined three-dimensional structure but may fold if a binding partner is present. In our current research we focus on the interaction of two neuronal IDPs with bio-membranes where binding to the membrane induces configurational changes or folding:
α-Synuclein (αSyn) is associated with various...
