Biophysics and Conformational Dynamics

Thursday, August 12, 2021

11:00 am - 12:00 pm

Conformational Dynamics of Immunomodulatory Leukointegrin aXB2 Ligand-Binding Domain

About the Event

Leukocyte integrins are allosteric, heterodimeric receptors with a repertoire of functions essential for immune surveillance, suppression of tumor growth, and metastasis of solid tumors. Zahra Mazhar plans to characterize the conformational dynamics of the aX I-domain, which is an unexplored niche for, not only leukointegrins but all a I-integrins, and presents an excellent opportunity for her predoctoral training in the integration of computational biology and experimental biophysics. This technique is phenomenal as it integrates errors, both random and systematic errors, from the predicted model as well as experimental measurements into parallel bias metadynamics (PBMetaD), a type of metadynamics (MetaD), that accelerates sampling in unexplored energy landscapes through the introduction of multiple low-dimensional bias potentials on selectively defined collective variables (CVs), to generate accurate depictions of conformational dynamism.

About the Speaker

Although Zahra Mazhar has had experience partaking in wet lab research while pursuing a master’s degree and while working in three distinct biotech companies, she desires to conduct research that amalgamates biophysics and computational research to explore proteins and nucleic acids. With a focus on drug discovery, Mazhar believes these resolutions are not discernable using wet lab research alone.

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