Exciting news part 2: I’m honored and delighted to announce that the Praetorius lab for Biomolecular Design @ISTAustria has been awarded an #ERCStG (before even starting) for “Design of Nucleic Acid-templated Ordered Protein Assemblies”. @ERC_Research

Anna and Sam are X-less but they’ve done some excellent work with this project. It’s a very exciting time for enzyme designers!

It’s been a tough few weeks. My 10yo daughter was diagnosed with a very rare, aggressive cancer called interdigitating dendritic cell sarcoma (IDCS). I’m reaching out to identify clinicians/patients who have encountered pediatric IDCS, indeterminate dendritic cell histiocytosis or other (non-LCH) histiocytic sarcomas cases. I'm trying to understand non-surgical chemo and targeted therapy options, new pathology markers to better diagnose subtypes/treatments, and any data on progression in pediatric patients. Please feel free to share – I’m trying to cast a wide net due to the rarity of this condition and how little is known. People can contact me directly at my first name (as written in my profile) at octant.bio.

“Science is a human activity.” The week before chemistry laureate David Baker visited Stockholm to receive his Nobel Prize, his 101st PhD student had just graduated from his lab. For Baker, doing great science is about collaboration – he puts great effort into fostering a diverse, vibrant and sociable community of scientists that he works with. One hundred and thirty of those students and researchers joined him in Stockholm – perhaps the ultimate lab celebration! More about Baker and the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: bit.ly/4iz7B56

After showing that AF2 can be used to design very large proteins by performing #RSO, I am happy to share another fun project we did: the #af2cycler @sokrypton @hendrik_dietz biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…

Excited to announce our new #proteindesign strategy for allosterically controlling the kinetics of protein-protein interactions! Read on for cool applications in cytokine signaling, biosensing, and protein circuits. biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…

This project builds on our previous work on protein switches, switchable assemblies, and exchanging protein assemblies: science.org/doi/10.1126/scie… nature.com/articles/s41586-0… science.org/doi/10.1126/scie…

I'm very proud of this work, but I'm even prouder of the amazing scientist @adam_broerman has become in the course of this project!

While most of the work focuses on artificial systems, Adam also shows that the approach can be used to add an "off-switch" to a previously designed minibinder (Neo2) that binds to the IL-2 receptor. Adams design binds the receptor tightly, but can be removed by adding competitor

Adam combined computational protein design with some smart concepts to generate a system in which the competition occurs via a conformational change.

While active (toehold-mediated) displacement is commonly used in DNA nanotech, competition in protein-protein interactions requires the original partner to dissociate before the competitor can bind, which is slow and can be limiting if spontaneous dissociation would be harmful.

I'm thrilled to share @adam_broerman's preprint @UWproteindesign about facilitated dissociation in designed proteins. In his designs, a competitor can actively displace a tightly bound partner, speeding up dissociation by several orders of magnitude. biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…

Finally, out in @ScienceMagazine today, our work on de novo protein design. Together with @HattoriLab , @sokrypton & @hendrik_dietz we showed how we can drastically improve AF2 based hallucination, surpassing, or reaching SOTA diffusion models doi.org/10.1126/science.adq1…

So delighted to have this finally online! In our newest preprint we are detailing the computational design of a catalytically active helical barrel protein with a highly engineerable central channel. Check it out! biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…

this one?

Excited to join the Gene Center at LMU @GeneCenter_LMU @LMU_Muenchen as a professor, looking forward to design some cool and unusual de novo proteins here!

I am looking for a partner in crime who actually understands biology in Vienna — join Aithyra to make some magic oeaw.ac.at/aithyra/news/sear…

#MERS vaccines built on our two-component protein nanoparticle platform induce robust neutralizing antibody responses and protect mice against vaccine-matched challenge. This collaborative project was led by @chao_cara and is out now on @biorxivpreprint: biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…

Congratulations @ferruz_noelia !