skip to main content
Caltech

Chemical Engineering Seminar

Thursday, April 13, 2023
4:00pm to 5:00pm
Add to Cal
Spalding Laboratory 106 (Hartley Memorial Seminar Room)
Characterizing Sugar Transporters with Biosensors and Cheminformatics
Prof. Lily Cheung, Assistant Professor, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology,

SWEETs are membrane sugar transporters that play critical roles in plant physiology and crop yields. We recently reported the design of a biosensor consisting of a plant SWEET and a conformation-sensitive fluorescent protein that translates sugar binding to the transporter into a fluorescence response. We named this biosensor SweetTrac1 and showed with a mass action kinetics model that changes in fluorescence intensity correspond to particular molecular events in the transport cycle. Furthermore, we demonstrate how biosensors combined with cheminformatics techniques can be used to decipher the variety of molecules that a transporter can recognize and provide suggestions on how to use biosensors for protein engineering.

For more information, please contact Sadie Rubalcava by phone at 6263953654 or by email at [email protected].