Today we report the design of protein sequences that adopt more than one well-folded structure, reminiscent of viral fusion proteins. This research moves us closer to creating artificial protein systems with reliable moving parts. In nature, many proteins change shape in response to their environment. This plasticity is often linked to biological function. While computational …
Congratulations to postdoc Neville Bethel for his selection as a Hanna H. Gray Fellow! Neville is one of 15 exceptional early career scientists selected by HHMI for support this year. His research is focused on understand through design the mechanical properties of supramolecular assemblies. “HHMI is committed to supporting people who will solve some of the greatest problems in science,” …
This week we report in NSMB a combined computational design and experimental selection approach for creating proteins that bind selectively to closely related receptor subtypes. This project was led by Luke Dang, a former Baker lab graduate student, and Yi Miao, a postdoctoral researcher in Christopher Garcia’s lab at Stanford. Abstract: To discriminate between closely related members of …
Bobby Langan became the latest Baker lab graduate today after successfully defending his PhD! Bobby helped pioneer the design of a molecular switch system dubbed LOCKR, and showed that LOCKR can be used to control the behavior of living cells. Keep an eye out for a series of papers detailing this exciting project, due out soon. …
Modeling even the smallest protein requires a big computer. That’s why we are expanding and modernizing our in-house computing resources. Recently, Luki Goldschmidt, Senior Manager of Computing, and Patrick Vecchiato, our Computer Support Analyst, upgraded our local high-performance cluster known as DIGs. We use DIGs to develop new computational methods and protocols. While a typical …
A fraction of the lab out to see the Yoshino cherry blossoms. Want to follow the cherry trees in real time? Check out @uwcherryblossom
At the end of a historic year for protein design, the Baker lab was honored to be profiled in the New York Times by famed science writer Carl Zimmer. Zimmer writes about the technology, progress and promise in the field, noting the contributions from our wonderful crowdsource participants. On the technology front, Rosetta continues to …
The lab was honored to be featured in Chemical & Engineering News’ annual Research of the Year roundup. Under a section titled “Computer-Driven Research Researched New Milestones”, C&EN highlight our determination of “600 families of proteins for which structures had been unknown (Science 2017).” Chemical & Engineering News is a weekly magazine published by the …
For some reason, this website was not populating when any combination of “Baker” and “lab” was searched through Google. We hope to have remedied this, and I am using this post as a way to get Google to crawl faster (by adding new “content”). Thanks to everyone who has been notifying me of this issue. …
Small constrained peptides combine the stability of small molecule drugs with the selectivity and potency of antibody-based therapeutics. However, peptide-based therapeutics have largely remained underexplored due to the limited diversity of naturally occurring peptide scaffolds, and a lack of methods to design them rationally. In an article published in Nature this week, Baker lab scientists …