correo-e: banu@maxwell.ucsf.edu
B.S. Honors in Chemical Enginering,
Bogazaci University, Istanbul, Turkey. 1995
M.S. in Chemical Enginering,
Bogazaci University, Istanbul, Turkey. 1997
Ph.D. in Chemical Enginering,
Bogazaci University, Istanbul, Turkey. 2001
Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Computational
Biology and Bioinformatics (CCBB) University of
Pittsburgh School of Medicine, with Dr. Hagai
Meirovitch, 2001-2003
Post Doctoral Fellow at the University of
California San Francisco (UCSF) with Prof. Ken A.
Dill, February 2003 - present
Áreas de interés:
Transition states in protein folding
Conferencia
Using the physics of protein folding to guide
conformational structure prediction
Resumen
We study the principles of protein folding in simple
statistical mechanical models. In particular, we focus on
the nature of the Transition State in two-state folders.
These transition states are interesting because of the
heterogeneity of folding routes. For example, the free
energy barrier, which is usually identical to the
Rate-Limiting Step (RLS), is not necessarily identical
for 2-state folding. Our models show that local contact
formation precedes non-local contacts. Proteins fold in
"zipping "routes by losing little conformational entropy
during each step. These strategies that are employed by
proteins during their folding can also be implemented as
conformational search methods for protein structure
prediction, leading to efficient algorithms.