Physics Seminar - Insights into Protein Allostery from Mechanical Networks

Proteins have long been modeled as mechanical networks of nodes connected by springs. We have studied the inverse problem, of starting with mechanical networks and then training them to have protein function inspired by allostery, where binding of a small molecule to the protein triggers a conformational change that enables binding or unbinding of another small molecule. Here I will describe what our approach brings to protein allostery, including a relation between structure and function and insight into a phenomenon known as global epistasis.