Cellular environments are highly crowded with macromolecular concentrations as high as 200-400 g/L. In such environments, frequent non-specific interactions are unavoidable and accessible space is limited.
A central question is how crowding affects the structure, dynamics, and function of biomolecules and how biomolecular behavior may be different between in vitro and in vivo conditions.
More specifically we are interested in crowding effects on:
- Protein stability
- Macromolecular diffusion
- Small molecule binding
- Enzyme function
We study crowding effects in a range of systems from complex cytoplasmic models to concentrated protein solutions and systems with synthetic crowders such as polyethylene glycol (PEG) or Ficoll.
