Biomolecular Structure & Design

A paper published in Nature [DOI] showing that designed homing endonucleases can knock out a GPF gene in mosquitoes was picked up by several other news sources, including the Discover Magazine Blog. Members of the Baker group, including BMSD student Summer Thyme, were authors on the paper.

Summer Thyme, a graduate student in the Baker Lab, was awarded the Stanford University Biochemistry Founders Award, which recognizes outstanding achievement by doctoral scholars in biochemistry and molecular biosciences.
The Daggett Group's paper, "Dynameomics: A Comprehensive Database of Protein Dynamics", which was published in the April issue of Structure, was a Research Highlight in the June issue of Nature Methods. The paper describes the science and methods behind the Group's publicly available Dynameomics Database.

BMSD welcomes new faculty to the program: James Bryers (Bioengineering), Michael Regnier (Bioengineering), and Kelly Lee (Medicinal Chemistry)!

The Baker Group's paper, "Kemp elimination catalysts by computational enzyme design" [DOI], was chosen as one of the Nature Editors' "favourite" Nature papers of 2008. Another paper by the Baker Group, "De Novo Computational Design of Retro-Aldol Enzymes" [DOI], was listed as a "Research Highlight" in the December 18th issue of Nature. BMSD student Alex Zanghellini was an author on both papers.
A Press Release from Microsoft highlighting the Daggett Group's application of the new SQL Server 2008 to their Dynameomics Database was picked up by The New York Times, Forbes, CNBC, and others.
The Economist published an article featuring the Baker Lab's new interactive protein folding game, Foldit.
The X-ray structure of a 2-oxotetrahydroquinoline-based inhibitor bound to the protein farnesyltransferase from the malaria parasite was solved by the Gelb Lab and featured on the cover of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.
The Daggett Lab was awarded 10 million processor hours for 2008 on the Department of Energy's supercomputers! The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), located in Berkeley, CA, is one of the largest computing facilities in the world for basic scientific research.
HHMI News praised the Baker Lab's groundbreaking work on the design of two novel enzymes.
The Baker Lab was awarded 12 million CPU hours on IBM Blue Gene supercomputer by the Department of Energy INCITE Program.

Bill Atkins and student Abhi Nath achieved #2 on the list of "Most-accessed articles: 2007" in the journal Biochemistry for their paper, "Applications of Phospholipid Bilayer Nanodiscs in the Study of Membranes and Membrane Proteins" [DOI].
The Baker Lab's work on protein structure prediction using Rosetta@home was featured in a Nature News Article.

The Gelb Lab's work on techniques for screening newborns for a variety of diseases was featured in a New York Times article.

The Daggett Lab's Dynameomics project was the subject of an article in The Scientist, "Unraveling Protein Folding" by Melissa Lee Phillips.

The Daggett Group's work on amyloid disease was the subject of editorials in Science by Orla Smith and in Nature by Christopher Surridge.

Michael Gelb, along with others, was awarded the "Project of the Year Award" by the Medicines for Malaria Venture for their work with farnesyltransferase. This honor was featured in an article by the Seattle PI.