We apply a rationally seeded computational protein design approach to engineering and designing new proteins for studying histone epigenetics. Our pipelines are guided by first principles—specifically, our understanding of molecular recognition of histone PTMS—and use continuously evolving protein design and modelling tools.
At its core, the Albanese Lab aims to address a classical biochemistry question: how does a single mutation in protein sequence affect a biological pathway? In the context of the nucleosome, our goal is address this question in three main areas (1) new and putative histone PTMs, (2) aberrant and oncogenic histone mutations and (3) the combinatorial histone code.
Synthetic cells provide a more complex environment than a test tube while being more controllable than cells. Our goal is to add synthetic cells to the epigenetic research toolbox for testing hypotheses and characterizing new or putative mechanisms of posttranslational regulation.