PEDS Protein Engineering and Design Webinar | February 2021

Watch a recording of the sixth PEDS webinar, as Editor-in-Chief Roberto Chica and invited speakers provide an update on the latest developments in the field of protein engineering, design, and selection.

Firstly, we heard a short presentation from Dr Sheel Dodani on the topic of ‘Discovery and evolution of biological supramolecular hosts for chloride’. Dr Dodani is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Dallas and PEDS Editorial Advisory Board member, and was recently awarded the prestigious 2020 Sessler Early Career Researcher Prize.

Secondly, we welcomed Professor Dek Woolfson from the University of Bristol, UK for a keynote lecture on the topic of ‘Understanding and exploiting a protein fold through rational and computational design’.

Professor Woolfson’s research has always been at the interface between chemistry and biology, applying chemical methods and principles to understand biological phenomena such as protein folding and stability. He has a long-standing interest in the challenge of rational protein design, and how this can be applied in synthetic biology and biotechnology. His particular emphasis is on making completely new protein structures not known to natural biology using a combination of rational and computational design. The current focuses of his group are in the parametric design of protein structures, assemblies and materials, and porting these into living cells to intervene in and to augment natural biological functions.

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