Linking Protein Dynamics to Structure, Function, and Evolution

Biological life depends on motion, spanning femtoseconds vibrations of atoms in enzyme transition states to deleterious protein aggregation that can span days or even weeks. Our current understanding of in vitro protein folding is due to decades of experimental and computational research that provided high-resolution characterization of protein structure, identification of folding principles, and development of folding algorithms. Outstanding challenges surround linking protein dynamics with their function in crowded cellular environments, interaction with chaperones and other players in the cellular ecosystem, evolution of protein sequences, and biomedical applications. In this conference, we will bring together leading experts in protein science who study protein dynamics in the context of these complicated topics. We will leverage the development of AI based methods and high-throughput experiments to scale up our understanding of these dynamic processes from single folding pathways to the collective dynamics of proteins critical to homeostasis.