Todd Yeates, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, has been awarded the 2016 American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) Delano Award for Computational Biosciences. The award is given to a scientist for the most accessible and innovative development or application of computer technology to enhance research in the life sciences at the molecular level. Previous recipients of the prestigious award include Stanford University's Michael Levitt, who went on to win the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Yeates was recognized for multiple scholarly contributions to computational biology, including methods to design large, open-protein shells capable of encapsulating cargo; methods to infer protein interactions from genome sequences; a powerful method to detect errors in protein structures; and a method to detect and overcome twinning, which bedevils protein structure determination.
He and his research team conduct research in molecular, structural and computational biology, and design structures built from novel self-assembling protein molecules. He and his colleagues reported last year in the journal Nature Chemistry that they created the largest-ever protein that self-assembles into a molecular “cage.” This research could lead to synthetic vaccines that protect people from the flu, HIV and other diseases.
He will present a lecture at the ASBMB annual meeting.
For more information about his research, visit his website.
