Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY
Notkestraße 85
22607 Hamburg

Center for Free-Electron Laser Science
DESY / Universität Hamburg

Project start date: 01.02.2023

Proteins are the workhorses of biology. Some of these drive chemical reactions; many interact with other proteins to communicate changes of priority in cellular activity. Fundamental to their operation is their flexibility and adoption of subtly different structures (conformations). Structural biology strives to understand how biological mechanisms are driven on a molecular level, to deliver clinical therapies and biotechnological breakthroughs. However, the ambition of structural biology is rapidly outpacing the scope of existing software for interpreting data, as we become more experimentally competent and delve deeper into the processes underpinning biology. Although current research questions often involve multiple datasets, our computational methods still treat them as isolated sources of information. We therefore lose subtle shifts between biological states, often crucial to changes in protein activity. This limits us, not only in the specific research question, but also in the fundamental understanding of protein function. We propose a concept for unifying all observations of a protein under one conformational space, called Representation of Protein Entities (RoPE). This will parametrise the subtleties to reveal exactly what we need to know: how and in what directions proteins flex, and how these conformational states relate to function.

Leader of the Helmholtz Young Investigators Group:

Dr. Helen Ginn
Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY
Notkestr. 85
22607 Hamburg

Phone: 040 42838-3687
Email: helen.ginn@desy.de

Partner university:

Prof. Dr. Henry Chapman
Center for Free-Electron Laser Science
DESY / Universität Hamburg
Notkestraße 85
22607 Hamburg, Germany
+49 (0)40 8998 4155
henry.chapman@cfel.de