Dafydd Jones

Molecular Bioscience Division, School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

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INPEC node since 2015

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The Jones group focus on understanding the molecular basis of protein plasticity in terms of structure, function and folding, and its application to the construction of new protein components and systems. The ultimate aim is to address one of the fundamental questions in biology: how amino acid sequence encodes the information for a protein to fold to its functional 3D structure. Our group collaborates chemists, structural biologists, computer modellers and physicists. Constructing new protein components means our work is closely aligned with the areas of synthetic biology and nanoscience/nanotechnology. Much of the group's work has a basis in synthetic biology whereby we construct new protein components or modify existing proteins for new applications, including single molecule electron and charge transfer, new routes to protein post-translationals modification and interfacing with non-biological materials. Both rational protein engineering and directed evolution are used to create new proteins and structural biology, single molecule analysis, molecular dynamics, biophysics and biochemistry are used to investigate the properties of these novel proteins. 

 

Keywords: Protein engineering, protein design, structural biology, synthetic biology, expanded genetic code, directed evolution, nanoscience