Structure Based Protein Targeting and Engineering, Project Course

Aim

After completing the course, the student should be able to:

• Analyze structural-functional relationships of proteins, other biological macromolecules and small molecules with methods in molecular biophysics, and with advanced structural biological methods in crystallography, NMR, cryo-EM, and bioinformatics.
• Plan, implement and evaluate a multidisciplinary project work to solve an issue with biotechnological significance
• Question and apply results from structural biological studies by critically evaluating scientific literature and deposited structural data (especially the PDB database).

Content

The lecture section provides an in-depth insight into biophysical molecular measurement methods as well as methodology and approaches in structural studies of proteins, other biological macromolecules and small molecules. Presented applications are a fusion of selected examples from active research by the course leaders and previous student work in courses in the field. Knowledge acquisition during the lectures and applications of modern software is reported in an individual assignment (UPG1). The remaining part of the course is conducted in project form. The project goal is to develop a project idea into a product concept such as a drug candidate, a tailored protein or an assay. The work is carried out in larger groups, so-called teams. Initially, key articles from the course leader are proposed for the project. A project plan is presented orally in seminar form (UPG2). After passing UPG2, the project is carried out by the team with literature studies, experiments in silico and at a research laboratory. The results of the project are presented using modern software for the generation of protein illustrations. Evaluated experimental results are presented both in a written report and in an oral presentation at a seminar (UPG3).