Protein Structure and Function in Biomedicine and Sustainable Biotechnology

About

Protein science is central in the fundamental understanding of how organisms function, but also in the application and significance of proteins in sustainable biotechnologies and biomedicine. The function of proteins is carried out through their three-dimensional structure and dynamics. The aim of this course is to guide students who already have a basic knowledge of protein chemistry, through more advanced aspects of protein science based on critical reading of original literature, with two themes running throughout the course: the role of proteins in disease and proteins as biotechnological tools for sustainable industrial applications.

The course will cover several aspects of the relationship between protein structure and function by going into depths into several case studies. Short introductions to biochemical and biophysical techniques to study proteins and to practical use of protein sequence and structure databases and molecular graphics programs will be given as part of the course. Aspects of structure and function of enzymes, particularly esterases and carbohydrate-active enzymes in industrial biotechnology, metalloproteins, transcription factors, membrane proteins, intrinsically unfolded proteins and designed proteins will be covered, with other topics varying from year to year.

The exam will take place 11-15 August

Course leader

Leila Lo Leggio

Target group

Master

Course aim

Knowledge:

The student must demonstrate to have acquired knowledge on the structure and functions of the specific proteins covered in the course, as well as the general mechanisms by which protein structure dictates its function, e.g. catalysis and molecular recognition

Skills:

The students must be able to:

independently read and evaluate original research articles in English and critically describe how the experiments give information on the relationship between protein structure and function.
formulate themselves precisely orally when discussing protein structure and function.
search for relevant information in protein sequence and structure databases
illustrate important points related to a protein's structure and function by preparing figures using a molecular graphics program
recognize and describe different types of structures and functional mechanisms for proteins.

Competencies:

The student must be able to gather and critically evaluate relevant information on specific aspects of protein structure and function from the scientific literature and relevant databases
The student must be able to relevantly integrate the gathered information in dis

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