Catalyst Project: Identification of New Regulators of Endothelial Protein C Receptor Functions

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Catalyst Projects provide support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities to work towards establishing research capacity of faculty to strengthen science, technology, engineering and mathematics undergraduate education and research. It is expected that the award will further the faculty member's research capability, improve research and teaching at the institution, and involve undergraduate students in research experiences. This project at Texas College intends to identify and characterize important molecules that affect proteins. Undergraduate students will participate in this research that involves computer modeling. The research results will be used in coursework at Texas College. This project will identify new small molecular regulators of functions of the physiologically important multifunctional and multi-ligand transmembrane receptor protein – EPCR. Using homology modeling and molecular dynamics simulations, the project will create functionally relevant conformations of EPCR which cannot be found in published structures. Structure based molecular docking of small molecules to these conformations followed by the database searches will identify candidate molecules that will be tested experimentally to reveal their regulatory potential.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.