Lipid Membrane Remodeling by Proteins and Peptides: Mechanistic insights from multi-scale analysis Qiang Cui

Speaker: Qiang Cui received his Ph. D. at Emory University with Professor
Keiji Morokuma in 1997. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the
Department of Chemistry, Harvard University with Professor Martin
Karplus, and started his independent career at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison (2001-2017). Since 2018, he has been a professor
of Chemistry at Boston University and holds courtesy appointments in
Physics and Biomedical Engineering. His main research field is
theoretical/computational chemistry and biophysics, especially the
analysis of bioenergy transduction, membrane biophysics, protein
dynamics and the nano/bio interface.

Abstract: We will discuss the analysis of membrane remodeling by proteins and peptides using multi-scale computational methods; these include mainly molecular dynamics simulations at atomistic and coarse-grained levels, although we will also touch upon analyses using lattice models and a mean- field theory. The discussions will cover several systems that we have analyzed in recent studies, which include the SAR1 protein from the COPII machinery and the ESCRTIII complex; we will also briefly discuss how protein condensates interact with lipid membranes, especially in terms of their mutual influence on morphology and phase behaviors. These examples illustrate different molecular properties and mechanisms that are potentially relevant to membrane remodeling, as well as the values and limitations of various computational methodologies in such context.