Library Item
Penn Researchers Create First Custom Designed Protein Crystal
Description:
Protein design is technique that is increasingly valuable to a variety of fields, from biochemistry to therapeutics to materials engineering. University of Pennsylvania chemists have taken this kind of design a step further; using computational methods, they have created the first custom-designed protein crystal.
Picking an ambitious design target with challenging features, the researchers’ success bodes well for the technique’s use in better understanding proteins’ makeup or using their self-assembling properties in making new materials with unique properties.
The research was conducted by professor Jeffrey G. Saven, postdoctoral fellow Christopher J. Lanci and graduate student Christopher M. MacDermaid, all of the Department of Chemistry in Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences. Also contributing to the work were Seung-gu Kang and Xi Yang, formerly of the chemistry department, and Rudresh Acharya, Benjamin North, X. Jade Qiu and William F. DeGrado, formerly of Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine’s Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics.
The team’s research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
