Structural dynamics of proteins in health and disease - Nasrollah Rezaei-Ghaleh
Nasrollah Rezaei-Ghaleh, Tenure-track researcher (RTT)
Biological processes are mediated by various types of biomolecular motions occurring on a broad range of time- and length-scales. In our group, we are interested in studying protein motions underlying processes such as protein folding/misfolding/aggregation, protein-protein and protein-small molecule interactions and biomolecular phase separation. The goal of our research is to obtain a mechanistic understanding of such processes at atomistic scale and develop (bio)chemical tools to control them. The key tool in our research is liquid-state NMR spectroscopy, which is combined with other biophysical and computational techniques whenever needed.
The current focus of our group is:
A. Neurodegeneration-related protein aggregation, especially in Alzheimer’s disease-related amyloid-beta peptide and tau protein and Parkinson’s disease-related alpha-synuclein;
B. Biological phase separation, especially in RNA splicing-related proteins underlying formation of Cajal bodies and nuclear speckles;
C. Dynamics in highly flexible protein systems, especially developing new NMR probes of dynamics expanding our experimental access to protein motions in intrinsically disordered proteins.