From Genome to NMR Spectrum

As structural biologists, we spend much of our time preparing samples for biomolecular NMR and collecting and analyzing the data. These experimental efforts are very time- and resource-intensive, suggesting that we should pay closer attention to systematically choosing targets for investigation. The advent of inexpensive nucleic acid sequencing technology has led to the rapid proliferation of genome and transcriptome data. Thus, tens of thousands of unique and potentially valuable enzymes have been “discovered” in principle, but in reality are languishing uncharacterized in databases. Furthermore, in many enzyme discovery studies, researchers choose proteins for investigation based on factors such as expression level in the host organism, which may not reflect suitability for the desired chemical application. In this talk, I will discuss our recent efforts toward developing a workflow for efficient target selection using bioinformatics and in silico methodology. Finally, I will present molecular modeling and experimental results, including NMR spectra, for Droserasin 1, a novel antimicrobial peptide we discovered from the genome of the carnivorous plant Drosera capensis.

8:00AM California or 11:00 am Boston or 5:00 PM Paris or 9:30 PM Delhi