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SUMMARY:Perutz Lecture 2021: The coming of age of de novo protein design  
 - Professor David Baker\, Director of the Institute for Protein Design\, U
 niversity of Washington\, USA 
DTSTART:20210427T150000Z
DTEND:20210427T160000Z
UID:TALK158377@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Scientific Meetings Co-ordinator
DESCRIPTION:Proteins mediate the critical processes of life and beautifull
 y solve the challenges faced during the evolution of modern organisms. Our
  goal is to design a new generation of proteins that address current-day p
 roblems not faced during evolution. In contrast to traditional protein eng
 ineering efforts\, which have focused on modifying naturally occurring pro
 teins\, we design new proteins from scratch based on Anfinsen’s principl
 e that proteins fold to their global free energy minimum. We compute amino
  acid sequences predicted to fold into proteins with new structures and fu
 nctions\, produce synthetic genes encoding these sequences\, and character
 ize them experimentally. SARS-COV2 provided a test of the relevance of the
 se methods to real-world challenges. In this talk\, I will describe the de
  novo design of SARS-COV2 candidate diagnostics\, therapeutics\, and vacci
 nes: designed switches which luminesce in the presence of antiviral antibo
 dies\, designed 55 residue proteins that bind to the Spike with picomolar 
 affinity and block viral infection\, and nanoparticle immunogens which eli
 cit much higher yields of neutralizing antibodies in animals than the Spik
 e trimer that is the basis of most current vaccine trials. I will close by
  describing the status of getting these into the clinic\, and lessons for 
 combatting future pandemics. 
LOCATION:Webinar -  https://zoom.us/j/92141784758?pwd=MC9UVVBLaUdkTkg4dDdJ
 b2RRaGhmUT09
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