Chemical Tools to Understand and Manipulate the Function of Intrinsically Disordered Regions of Proteins

A key problem in life-sciences research is to understand biomacromoleular function in molecular and temporal resolution – this would provide unprecedented understanding of the molecular mechanisms of health and disease. Moreover using chemical tools to delineate molecular mechanisms has the added advantage of providing tools to manipulate function and starting points for drug-discovery. The goal of this project is exploit state of the art photoinduced cross-linking and fragment based ligand discovery methods to understand and manipulate the aggregation behavior of α-synuclein – a protein which plays a key role in the neurodegenerative condition, Parkinson’s disease.
This multidisciplinary project will provide opportunities for the student to develop skills in chemical biology, synthetic chemistry, protein chemistry, molecular biology, structural biology and biophysics. The results generated will open the door to new methods for understanding aggregation mechanisms a basic question of critical importance and tools to support drug-discovery and provide an ideal springboard for the student to pursue a career in diverse aspects of lifesciences research.