UC MERCED

Our group's research interests are on the areas of Molecular Biophysics and Synthetic Molecular Biology. Within this broad area we investigate the conformational and functional behavior of proteins with the combined goals of deciphering their mechanisms of operation and understanding their general design principles towards developing exciting engineering applications in the emerging field of Bionanotechnology... Protein Folding: what are the molecular mechanisms that proteins use to find their unique and structurally complex functional 3D structures?... Folding coupled to Binding and Function: how do proteins change shape upon stimuli and transduce signals at the molecular level? And how do some proteins exploit their conformational flexibility to exhibit a rich palette of binding behaviors, including functional moonlighting, induced-fit and conformational selection, binding to multiple partners and allosteric regulation?