SPEAKER: Jin-Gon Shim - Postdoctoral Fellow in Ziarek Lab.
TITLE: Relaxation suppression by chemical control of nuclear shielding.
ABSTRACT: Aromatic 19F-13C TROSY probes offer a principled solution to the limitations of traditional trifluoromethyl tags in bioNMR, such as spectral crowding and biased deconvolution. By leveraging Bloch–Redfield–Wangsness theory, these cysteine-reactive probes optimize CSA–dipolar interference for both nuclei. Specifically, the chlorinated derivative 4-2-Cl exhibits superior 19F relaxation and an exceptionally low 13C R2 (2.3 Hz) when conjugated to MBP. This dual-nucleus readout enhances resolution and sensitivity, enabling robust assignments in large, complex biomolecules. By integrating structural design with chemical reactivity, these probes significantly expand the scope of high-resolution, site-specific reporting in heterogeneous molecular assemblies.
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SPEAKER: Mario Garcia – PhD Candidate in the lab of Gabe Rocklin.
TITLE: Predicting Protein Stability and Conformational Fluctuations for ααα Protein Domains.
ABSTRACT: Protein conformational fluctuations play a critical role in protein function, yet they remain difficult to predict and interpret. To address this, our lab has developed a high-throughput approach leveraging hydrogen–deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS) to quantify folding stability and conformational fluctuations for hundreds of small protein domains in a single experiment. Using this approach, we generated over 2,000 folding stability and conformational fluctuation measurements for ααα domains. This large-scale dataset has enabled us to train machine learning models to predict protein stability and conformational fluctuations for ααα domains.