We developed a novel approach for modeling antibodies in complex with their corresponding antigens, and incorporated it as an Advanced function of the ClusPro Server. The Antibody-Epitope Mapping (AbEMap) Server allows the user to predict antibody-antigen interactions with three types of inputs: (i) X-ray structures, (ii) computationally predicted structures, and (iii) simply amino acid sequences. The details of processing these three input types and differences in efficiencies are discussed in this publication in Nature Protocols.
Author: xiaogli
High Accuracy Prediction of PROTAC complex structures
A novel method to aid in design of PROTACs was developed by our group and published in JACS!
PROTAC – PROteolysis TArgeting Chimera is a heterobifunctional drug-like molecule that hijacks the Ubiquitin-Proteasome System (UPS) in mammalian cells and catalytically drives the process of ubiquitination of our protein of interest. The ubiquitinated proteins then are recognized and degraded by the native proteasome system of the cell.
In this work, we present a computational modeling approach that drastically reduces the cost of novel PROTAC design, also considering that synthesizing PROTAC molecules is often a challenge. In our publication, we’ve shown that our method is successfully predicting the benchmark datasets based on calculated Weighted Sum Potentials, and is especially precise in deriving preferred linker lengths and linker attachment points.
A novel structural systems biology approach
In a collaboration with Boston University, we developed a new, faster approach in investigating the interactome using mass spectrometry and applied it to reveal and understand mechanisms that drive the malignant cell phenotype formation. This work resulted in two publications in Nature Communications.
In our first publication, we introduced a new multiplex Co-fractionation/Mass Spectrometry (mCF/MS) platform that is more technically efficient, cost-effective and faster than previously reported Co-fractionation/Mass Spectrometry (CF/MS) methods. The mCF/MS approach was applied to compare the global protein interactome of mammary epithelial cells to the Protein Interaction Network (PIN) of two breast cancer cell lines, where many multimolecular complexes that drive malignant cell formation were described and investigated.
In the second publication based on our work, we introduced PAMAF: a Parallelized multidimensional analytic framework that examines 12 modalities: protein abundance in whole-cells, nuclei, exosomes, secretomed and membranes; N-glycosylation, phosphorylation; metabolites; mRNA, miRNA; and, in parallel, single-cell transcriptomes. Using this method, we explored the key proteins in the process of Epithelial to Mesenchymal Transition.