Interests
My research employs a combined experimental and theoretical approach to understand membrane protein dynamics.
On the experimental side, we use and develop a time-resolved X-ray solution scattering (TR-XSS) technique to monitor membrane protein conformational dynamics in solution at high temporal resolution.
We also use molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to model the experimental data and to visualise phenomena that are very hard, if not impossible, to address with existing experimental techniques, such as partitioning in the membrane interface and dynamic patterns in protein salt-bridge/H-bind interactions. Any prediction from the simulations should be anchored in experimental results. So in addition to the scattering techniques, we also use functional characterisation techniques that target protein activity to assay mutational phenotypes.
Selected research topics
- Determining kinetics of transient intermediates in ATP-dependent ion transport (e.g. P-type ATPases) using synchrotron-based TR-XSS experiments
- Structural determination of the isolated transient intermediates
