Hines Lab Research Projects

Current Research Projects

Riboswitch-targeted Drug Discovery

 

英航

RNA Thermal Stability and Drug Discovery

The thermal stability of an RNA secondary and tertiary structure is both a physical characteristic and also a potential target for drug discovery.  This is particularly the case with RNA thermoregulators in bacteria that regulate gene expression via the thermal denaturation of unique RNA elements. Our lab is currently investigating environmental factors (temperature, cations, small molecules and other biomolecules) that affect RNA thermal stability and the extent  to which ligand structure-specific interactions can be designed to alter this stability selectively.

Computational Drug Discovery

 

We use molecular dynamics to model structurally complex RNA motifs and identify unique, druggable conformers. We have applied this approach to studying unique RNA motifs in bacteria and viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19. In addition to the computational research in the RNA drug discovery projects, we are also investigating ligand-protein interactions computationally to design novel compounds to treat cancer and diabetes. We are researching the structure-activity relationship of small molecules binding to key regulatory receptors. We utilize a combination of bioinformatic, molecular dynamics and molecular modeling techniques to identify key recognition features in the ligand-receptor interaction.