PICS Colloquium: Lipid Membrane Remodeling by Proteins and Peptides: Mechanistic insights from multi-scale analysis with 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.