Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Seminar Series: Lily Cheung

Description

Lily Cheung, an assistant professor in the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, will give a talk titled "Characterizing Sugar Transporters Biosensors and Cheminformatics" as part of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Seminar Series.

Cheung is the recipient of an National Science Foundation's National Plant Genome Initiative Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology, an NSF CAREER Award, and a Human Frontier Science Program Early Career Award.

This is a hybrid event; to attend virtually, use Zoom Meeting ID: 919 5918 2879 / Passcode: 270887.

Abstract:

SWEETs are membrane sugar transporters that play critical roles in plant physiology, crop yields, and biotechnology. We recently reported the design of a biosensor consisting of a plant SWEET and a conformation-sensitive fluorescent protein that translates sugar binding to the transporter into a fluorescence response. We named this biosensor SweetTrac1 and showed with a mass action kinetics model that changes in fluorescence intensity correspond to particular molecular events in the transport cycle. Furthermore, we demonstrate how biosensors combined with cheminformatics techniques can be used to decipher the variety of molecules that a transporter can recognize and provide suggestions on how to use biosensors for protein engineering.