Vincenzo Venditti, Assistant Professor, Chemistry, Iowa State University, will give a talk on "Conformational disorder in regulation of biological catalysts"

ABSTRACT

Proteins display different degrees of structural heterogeneity, going from proteins that fold into a unique rigid structure to intrinsically disordered proteins, with a continuum of possibilities in between. Conformational disorder is emerging as an important feature of biopolymers, regulating a vast array of cellular functions, including signaling, protein aggregation, and phase separation. In this seminar, I will present NMR, crystallography, computer simulation, protein engineering, and functional assay data that support a role for structural heterogeneity and conformational disorder in functional regulation of slow enzymes such as the C-terminal domain Enzyme I of the bacterial phosphotransferase system (PTS), and the human RNA demethylases FTO and Alkbh5. Strategies will be discussed as to exploit structural disorder for the development of specific inhibitors of these important pharmaceutical targets.