Molecular Life Sciences Program

Our broad goal is to examine the structure and assembly of protein oligomers, determining structures of products, reactants and intermediates, and correlating them with solution studies. A major focus of the lab is to understand the biophysics of virus capsid assembly. The capsid of a spherical of virus is assembled from multiples of 60 protein subunits, arranged with icosahedral symmetry. All projects in the lab involve multimeric viral proteins and enzymes.