Ross, Adrian, George and Claire recently attended the PS3 conference on the computational design of protein-cofactor complexes, hosted by the Migal Research Institute in Upper Galilee. This conference marked the end of a 5 year ERC project – PS3 – An artificial water-soluble photosystem by protein design.
All four members of the Anderson group who attended the meeting had the opportunity to present. George and Claire both spoke about the de novo design of b-type heme containing maquettes, while Adrian presented on design of photocatalytic maquettes. Luckily the audience weren’t tired of hearing about heme-containing maquettes after 3 back-to-back Anderson talks, so there was Ross’s presentation on “A blueprint for catalytic promiscuity in de novo maquettes” to round it all off.
The conference was a valuable opportunity to reconnect with other research groups working in a similar area to us, most notably the Dutton group and it’s various alumni. There were lots of exciting talks on metalloproteins, de novo design and catalysis, as well as techniques such as ultrafast spectroscopy and QM/MM for prediction of cofactor spectral properties!
Many thanks to Dror and Vikas for organising such a fantastic meeting!
