Mihaly Mezei, PhD

Specific Clinical/Research Interest:
Computer simulation of aqueous systems; methodology and biomolecular applications

Summary of Research Studies:
Research in my laboratory centers on developing computational techniques for the modeling and understanding of complex molecular systems such as proteins and nucleic acids in their aqueous environments. The methods developed are applied to problems of interest in structural biology. Methodological developments focus on novel techniques to calculate free energy from computer simulations, on extending the range of applicability of grand-canonical ensemble simulations, on enhancing Monte Carlo sampling algorithms and on developing novel approaches to the analysis and visualization of macromolecular structures and computer simulation results. These techniques are applied to the calculation of the solvent contribution to conformational free energy differences between various conformation of polypeptides, drug candidates; probing ionic solvation; modeling lipid bilayers. In addition, ligand-protein interactions are studied by docking tecniques and by molecular dynamics. Recent work showed that grand-canonical ensemble simulations can be used to predict sites for derivatizing a ligand in order to enhance its binding affinity.