Understanding and improving membrane protein expression in cells

Abstract

Although proteins are synthesized only in specialized cellular locations, they are destined for delivery to all corners of the cell-and beyond. A key step in this delivery process is the efficient transport, or translocation, of the newly synthesized proteins across cell membranes, which involves a delicate balance between mol. processes. Recent studies offer highresoln. glimpses into the translocation process, but many fundamental aspects of its mechanism and regulation remain poorly understood. I will present our lab's efforts to computationally simulate the protein translocation process and to predict ways of controlling the in vivo targeting and delivery of proteins. This work employs methods that span across atomistic simulation, coarse-grained methods, machine learning techniques, and exptl. collaborations.