Wednesday 5th June 2019
h. 2.00 p.m.
Seminar Room, 1st Floor, U5 Building – via Roberto Cozzi 55, Milano
Lecturer: Shuguang Zhang – Laboratory of Molecular Architecture, Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Title: QTY code, a simple tool for protein design
Abstract. Shuguang Zhang in 2011 started to design membrane proteins. There are ~30% genes code for membrane proteins in genomes that are crucial for both internal and external cellular communications. He invented a simple and elegant molecular QTY code (glutamine, threonine and tyrosine) to systematically replace the hydrophobic amino acids leucine (L), valine (V), isoleucine (I) and phenylalanine (F) in the 7 transmembrane alpha-helices of G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). GPCRs function similar like our mobile phones to communicate and interact with external world. Our results suggest that despite 46%-56% transmembrane alpha-helices changes, water-soluble QTY variants still maintain stable structures and biological function, namely, ligand-binding activities. Our simple QTY code is a likely useful tool and has big impact for designs of water-soluble variants of previously water-insoluble and perhaps aggregated proteins, including amyloids.
Shuguang Zhang in 1990 made a serendipitous discovery of a repetitious and ionic self-complementary peptide segment in yeast protein Zuotin in 1990. This is discovery of the first self-assembling peptides that eventually led to the development of a new field of peptide nanobiotecnology. Furthermore, his discovery inspired numerous people around the world to design a variety of self-assembling peptides for wide spread uses including peptide hydrogels in materials science, 3D tissue cell culture and tissue engineering, nanomedicine, sustained molecular releases, clinical and surgical applications. He co-founded a startup company
3DMatrix that brings the self-assembling peptide materials to human clinical and surgical uses.