Membrane Protein Structure Prediction
My research is focused on developing methods for prediction of membrane protein structure. The majority of pharmaceuticals currently available target membrane proteins. For example, Zyprexa a drug for the treatment of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia targets a membrane protein. Knowing the structure of membrane proteins is a useful asset for drug design. However due to the complexity of the membrane environment experimental methods face difficulties in determining membrane protein structures. Therefore, out of all the known protein structures only 2% are membrane proteins. During my post-doc I am investigating computational solutions for modeling membrane protein structures using template structures available in PDB.