{"id":1712,"date":"2017-09-11T12:15:47","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T11:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/biosciences\/?p=1712"},"modified":"2017-09-11T12:15:47","modified_gmt":"2017-09-11T11:15:47","slug":"research-seminar-intracellular-screening-for-antagonists-of-proteins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/biosciences\/2017\/09\/11\/research-seminar-intracellular-screening-for-antagonists-of-proteins\/","title":{"rendered":"Research Seminar: Intracellular screening for antagonists of proteins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Jody Mason,<\/strong> Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath<\/b><\/p>\n

Tuesday 26<\/b>th<\/b> September, 1.00 p.m., Stacey Lecture Theatre 1<\/b><\/p>\n

My group focus on design of peptide-based antagonists with high affinity and specificity for inhibiting protein-protein interactions. While forces driving stability are now well understood, much less is known about designing for target specificity. We use Protein-fragment Complementation Assays (PCAs) and alternative systems combined with semi-rational design to select functionally active antagonists of Jun and Fos peptides that can inhibit the oncogenic Activator Protein-1 transcriptional regulator. We have devised a Competitive and Negative Design Initiative (CANDI) technique to increase target-specificity in the PCA system by expressing potential off-targets during selection. Data generated has allowed us to predict coiled coil stability and specificity, and consequently to generate heterospecific coiled coil sets using only on the primary sequence as a design guide. Our screening approach is also being applied to a range of other therapeutically relevant systems that include \u03b2-amyloid and \u03b1-synuclein implicated in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases respectively.<\/p>\n