Prof. Eric May and postdoc Shivangi Nangia will investigate virus infection mechanisms on world’s Fastest supercomputer for biomolecular simulations. Drs. May and Nangia have received an allocation on the Anton2 supercomputer donated to the Pittsburg Supercomputing Center by D.E. Shaw Research. The allocation was granted based upon a competitive application process which involved peer review by a panel convened by the National Research Council. The allocation will allow them to analyze viral protein-membrane interactions over  timescales which are not feasible on standard supercomputing environments. 

The North East Structural Symposium will be held on October 14 at the UCONN Health campus. The topic is “New Paradigms in Drug Discovery.”  For a list of speakers and registration information follow the NESS link at the bottom of the page.

Keifer DZ, Motwani T, Teschke CM, Jarrold MF. (2016) Measurement of the accurate mass of a 50 MDa infectious virus.  Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom. 30(17):1957-62. doi: 10.1002/rcm.7673.

Wu W, Leavitt JC, Cheng N, Gilcrease EB, Motwani T, Teschke CM, Casjens SR, Steven AC. (2016) Localization of the Houdinisome (Ejection Proteins) inside the Bacteriophage P22 Virion by Bubblegram Imaging. MBio.  7(4). pii: e01152-16. doi: 10.1128/mBio.01152-16.

UCONN has entered into a three-year agreement with Schrodinger, Inc. to provide unlimited use of their Suite for Molecular and Materials Simulations. The package can be used for drug discovery, atomic-scale simulations, modeling of biologics, and production of molecular graphics. 

Instructions on how to access the software can be found at:

 http://software.uconn.edu/schrodinger

Congratulations to Eric May, who was  awarded an NIH R35 MIRA grant for early-stage investigators. The title is “Structural Dynamics of Viral Proteins: Computational Investigation of Capsids, Lytic Peptides and Nucleoproteins Under Varying Conditions.”

Pattis, J.G. and May, E.R. (2016) Influence of RNA binding on the structure and dynamics of the Lassa Virus Nucleoprotein. Biophys. J. 110, 1246-1254.  doi:10.1016/j.bpj.2016.02.008

Sathappa, M. and Alder, N.N. (2016) The ionization properties of cardiolipin and its variants in model bilayers. BBA-Biomembranes 6,1362–1372. doi:10.1016/j.bbamem.2016.03.007

Congratulations to the SB3 graduate and undergraduate recipients of MCB summer 2016 fellowships: Murugappan Sathappa (Alder lab), Crain Fellowship; Kunica Asija (Teschke lab) and Nathan Sanford (Robinson lab), Lucas-Lenard Fellowships; and Adrian Coscia (Alder lab), Schuster Award.

Mayo, C.B. et al. (2016) Activation of PKR by short stem-loop RNAs containing single-stranded arms. RNA 22, 1065-1075.doi:10.1261/rna.053348.115.