Leon Obendorf, based in the Knaus Lab, has recently been awarded the opportunity to lead an X-Student Research Group project through the Berlin University Alliance. The project invites bachelor and master students from biology, chemistry, bioinformatics, and related fields to explore uniqueness of kinase binding pockets using computational as well as wet-lab techniques.

Using molecular dynamics simulations with the OpenMMDL pipeline (https://github.com/wolberlab/OpenMMDL), students will investigate how water molecules which are stably bound in kinase ATP binding pockets could lead to more precise drugs. The aim is to explore how small differences in these water networks could explain specificity of known drugs and why certain off-targets within the kinome are present and thus could help increasing future drug development using the dynamic information of the protein in its aqueous environment.

If you are a student and interested to participate: write to leon.obendorf@fu-berlin.de!