(557a) Amyloid Assembly: Unveiling Complexity and Tapping Engineering Opportunities
AIChE Annual Meeting
2022
2022 Annual Meeting
Liaison Functions
KIChE-US Chapter Open Forum (Invited Talks)
Wednesday, November 16, 2022 - 3:30pm to 3:55pm
An amyloid protein belongs to a group of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs). Due to high structural flexibility, occasionally coupled with functional roles, Nature often uses IDPs as structure-switching biosensors for rapid and specific signaling processes. Thus, IDPs may serve as a new source of proteins that can readily be engineered into molecular sensors with unique sensing behaviors. In the second half of my talk, I will describe our recent engineering effort to create a structurally flexible αS variant, PG65-MIMO (a PG65 variant with Multiple-Inputs and Multiple-Outputs), that rapidly generates distinct fluorescence responses to the three major αS conformers (monomers, oligomers, and fibrils).
Overall, my talk will illustrate important challenges to address to better understand complexity of amyloid diseases and present new engineering opportunities with IDPs.