Dr. Robert Ulrich, Fort Detrick, USAMRIID
Host: Dr. Minjoung Kyoung
Targeting biomolecular interactions of emerging infectious diseases
The spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and increasing human encounters with new viruses are driving the call for new approaches to control infectious diseases. Binary protein interactions that form the basic building blocks of molecular networks and dynamic cellular assemblies are potential targets for the development of new antibiotics, anti-viral drugs, and predictive biomarkers. Focused libraries of combinatorial protein variants can be employed to study structure-function relationships of binding complexes and to characterize drug-target interactions. On a larger scale, entire proteomes of viruses and bacteria that are synthesized from starting templates of genomic sequences can be incorporated into analytical platforms for discovery and characterization of key protein-protein interactions. He will present examples of each of these applications that we have used to provide insight into the design of vaccines and small molecule inhibitors for controlling infectious diseases.