Our objectives are:

To determine the structural context for specific functional states of transmembrane signaling receptors.

To characterize the energy landscapes and the molecular mechanisms underlying the transitions between these functional states

The systems that we are interested in are:

Epidermal Growth Factor Receptors (involved in cellular motility, adhesion, apoptosis…)

Ionotropic Glutamate Receptors (involved in higher-order processes including memory and learning).

The methods that we develop are:

Because of the size and time-scale of the events that we study, we need to develop new tools for modeling and simulating accurately very large macromolecular assemblies in realistic environments. Currently we are focusing on developing coarse-grained models for various biomolecules including sugars, proteins and DNA.