Proteins are macromolecules that play key roles in the function and structure of living organisms. Developing a novel protein to bind to a specific molecule is a time intensive task. One method used to create new proteins is the modification of an existing protein. In general, the space of the problem grows exponentially with the required amount of modification determined by the protein-molecule system. The goal of this project is to use computational models in order to significantly reduce the space of this problem and speed up the protein development process. In particular, the objective is to be able to produce a relatively small library of candidate proteins with the desired binding properties.

Over the past two years I have been a UROP in the Computational Biophysics Group under the supervision of Professor Stultz. Both my prior work within my UROP as well as my coursework have provided me with the proper modeling and computational backgrounds needed for this project.