Structural biology

The course will focus on the following topics:

1. Structure: intermolecular interactions, structure of biomolecules, experimental methods in structural biology (i.e., X-ray crystallography, NMR, cryo-electron microscopy), structural classification, protein structure prediction using genomic data and machine learning.

2. Dynamics: elements of statistical mechanics, molecular mechanics of biomolecules, molecular simulations, molecular binding and free energy calculations.

3. Selected topics: protein design and engineering; protein folding, molecular docking, integrative modeling; structure-based drug discovery, machine learning for structural biology.

Practicals and projects will run in parallel to lectures to have a first-hand experience on molecular visualization, major structural biology techniques, molecular modeling, protein design, biomolecular mechanics and dynamics, structure-based drug design, protein interaction networks, macromolecular assemblies, protein structure predictions using AlphaFold.