Graduate Teaching Assistant
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio
I am Mohsin Ali, 2nd year graduate student in Faik's lab at Ohio university Athens campus. I am working on a project related to protein-protein interactions (PPIs) between glycosyltransferases (GTs) in cell wall. To predict PPIs between GTs is challenging and no bioinformatics tools are available to facilitate the identification of GT complexes. Thus, the main goal of this project is to develop a bioinformatics tool for PPIs between GTs (called GTome) and the creation of a database to host the findings. Our strategy consists of screening CAZy database to collect publicly available information on GTs for which 3D structures have been resolved. For GTs without 3D structure available, advanced molecular modeling and simulations to generate 3D structures will be applied to these GTs. This collection of structures will be used to map shallow binding clefts that would likely represent deep pockets involved in PPIs.