August 31, 2014

Twitter_UWproteindesignHere is a list of August 2014 news items from the IPD. Follow the links to read and learn more:

PEOPLE

– Welcome to new IPD members Jasmine Nguyen and Chris Stafford! Jasmine and Chris will be joining the team at the IPD Structured Science Protein Core facility.

– Welcome to new postdoctoral fellow Anindya Roy!

– Congratulations to Dr. James Moody and Dr. Javier Castellanos on their successful Ph.D. dissertation defenses this month!
Dr. Moody gave a talk entitled “Computational Design of Protein-Protein Interactions to Engineer Novel Inhibitors of the p53 Pathway and the Polycomb Repressive Complex”.
Dr. Castellanos gave a talk entitled “Iterative Multistate Negative Design of Protein Folds”.

– The next round of WRF Innovation Fellowship applications are due December 1, 2014. Read more about the fellowship program here. Applications are on the Interfolio website at this link: http://apply.interfolio.com/24848
First round WRF Innovation Fellows will be announced next month!

RESEARCH

The Foldit focus on Ebola caught a lot of attention this month. Follow the links below to see the Foldit Ebola puzzles and to follow the story at various news sources:

– Gamers helping UW in Ebola research – Seattle TimesTargeting Ebola

– University of Washington taps gamers to tackle Ebola – KOMO TV

– Continuing the battle against Ebola – Foldit blog

– Previous Ebola puzzles:
Ebola hotspot discovery – Puzzle 846
74 residue Ebola binder design – Puzzle 884b
Ebola binder design with disulfides – Puzzle 879

– Mention in West Coast Biotech Roundup – Xconomy

This month, we explored the power of charity to supply the massive computing capacity needed to support our protein design research. Thanks to Charity Engine, Rosetta@home saw a significant increase in users and computers! Read our post on this collaboration and volunteer computing here:

The power of charity for protein design – IPD News

Translational Investigator Dr. Ingrid Swanson Pultz put together an informative slide show on her award winning candidate oral therapeutic for celiac disease – KumamaxSlide18

Engineering an oral therapeutic for celiac disease – IPD News

INSTITUTE

– Read a letter from Institute for Protein Design Director Dr. David Baker summarizing the exciting accomplishments and progress made at the IPD in the past year. Letter from the Director

– Your contributions help us accomplish our ambitious and exciting research projects! Consider making a gift today to support the work of the Institute for Protein Design. Follow this link to view our Give page.