Rational Design and Development of Polysialic Acid-Binding Peptides

Prediction and Rational Design of Antimicrobial Peptides

Lumican Peptides: Rational Design Targeting ALK5/TGFBRI

Lumican, a small leucine rich proteoglycan (SLRP), is a component of extracellular matrix which also functions as a matrikine regulating multiple cell activities. In the cornea, lumican maintains corneal transparency by regulating collagen fibrillogenesis, promoting corneal epithelial wound healing, regulating gene expression and maintaining corneal homeostasis. We have recently shown that a pe...

Rational development of antimicrobial peptides for therapeutic use: design and production of highly active compounds

The emergence of drug-resistant pathogenic microbial strains has created an urgent need for new anti-infective molecule development. In order to avoid the spread of bacterial resistance, there is pressing demand to design a novel class of antibiotics having different mechanism of action in comparison to existing drugs. Natural antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) represent a novel class of molecules w...

Rational design of a calcium-binding protein.

Calcium ions play key roles as structural components in biomineralization and as a second messenger in signaling pathways. We have introduced a de novo designed calcium-binding site into the framework of a non-calcium-binding protein, domain 1 of CD2. The resulting protein selectively binds calcium over magnesium with calcium-binding affinity comparable to that of natural extracellular calcium-...

Knowledge-based Design of Inorganic-binding Peptides

How proteins/peptides bind to and recognize the inorganic materials with different affinities and specificities has primary importance in biomineralization, hard tissue regeneration (e.g., bone and dental tissues) and making practical materials using synthetic peptides as nucleators, growth modifiers or as control agents [1-4]. The understanding of the possible mechanism(s) of inorganic formati...