Computational Structural Biology
About
The group uses cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to determine the structure of amyloid proteins. We aim to understand the molecular basis of diseases that involve amyloid aggregation, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinsons's, and diabetes. For this, we study the polymorphism of amyloid fibrils of Aβ, α-synuclein, IAPP, and amyloid model systems such as SH3. Furthermore, the group develops computational methods for modeling and refinement of protein structures using low resolution or sparse experimental data. The focus is on the integration of structure prediction approaches with experimental data from different sources such as single particle cryo-EM, X-ray crystallography and NMR. We are working on the prediction of local structural details using molecular dynamics simulation techniques to improve low-resolution model building and homology modeling. The goal is to reliably describe the structure and conformational dynamics of proteins from low or intermediate resolution data.
Research Topics
- cryo-electron microscopy
- amyloids
- protein structure prediction
Mara Zielinski
Luisa Schäfer
Simon Sommerhage
Benedikt Frieg
James Geraets
José Camino
Shahrzad Salimi
Jonas Meyer
Duy Tam Vu
Anja Truong