Beyond structure - solving conformational dynamics for intractable proteins

蛋白质执行几乎每一项任务，使细胞和整个生物体生理学的惊人复杂性。这些分子机器由于其动态改变形状的能力而执行这种令人难以置信的任务。对于这些机器中的绝大多数，我们只能查看它们可以采用的可能形状的快照，无法监控它们如何从一种形状变为另一种形状，这对它们的功能至关重要。该项目旨在开发和应用一种全新的方法来可视化蛋白质形状的动态变化，这是目前技术无法实现的。这将使我们能够对蛋白质的功能提供新的描述和理解，这是所有生物学的基础。

Proteins perform almost every task that enables the amazing complexity of cellular and whole organism physiology. These molecular machines perform this incredible array of tasks due to their ability to dynamically change shape. For the vast majority of these machines, we can only view a snapshot of the possible shapes they can adopt and can’t monitor how they change from one shape to another, which is critical for their functioning. This project aims to develop and apply a completely new method to visualise dynamic changes in protein shape which is not possible with current techniques. This will allow us to provide a new description and understanding of the function of proteins, which is fundamental to all biology.