Prof. Amy E Keating

Research in the Keating lab is focused on understanding the molecular basis of protein-protein interaction specificity and linking this to biological function.

Protein-protein interactions mediate almost all biological processes important to life. But our abilities to predict, design or disrupt such interactions is relatively primitive. The Keating group uses a variety of approaches to address this problem, including bioinformatics, molecular modeling, computational protein design and experimental biochemistry and biophysics. The aim of the work is to improve understanding, at a high level of detail, of how the interaction properties of proteins are encoded in their sequences and structures.

Most members of the lab work on small, recurring domains and motifs that mediate associations in many biological complexes. In particular, the group carries out extensive studies of bZIP transcription factors and Bcl-2 family proteins, both of which are important to human health and implicated in diseases such as cancer. Professor Keating and her lab members have developed methods for measuring large numbers of protein-protein interactions, using coil-coil microarrays, quantitative fluorescence assays and screens where one interaction partner is displayed on the surface of yeast. The resulting interaction data are used for building and testing computational models that describe how sequence and structure are related to interaction specificity. Such models can be used to predict new interactions among existing proteins, or to design novel proteins with desired functions. The group is very interested in engineering proteins and peptides with customized binding properties, which could pave the way to new reagents or therapeutics.


(summary updated 11/2011)