Model systems to understand protein behavior in living cells

• Applicant: Dr. Arnold Boersma
• Subject Area: Biophysics ; Biochemistry ; Biological and Biomimetic Chemistry
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 433431617

• Final Report Year: 2024

Final Report Abstract

The behaviour of a protein depends on its environment, and therefore a protein has different properties in a cell compared to a test-tube. A notable difference is that the interior of a cell is highly crowded with biomacromolecules. It is unclear how proteins are affected by such a crowded environment. To understand the role of the intracellular environment better, we studied the effect of different cell-mimetic environments on model proteins. We tested different types of environments and different proteins and saw that protein behavior is indeed strongly dependent on the environment properties. These insights now allow for estimating how proteins may respond to extreme conditions that cells experience.