Our passion at the Golub lab is to design and explore through chemical and biological means how the assembly of biomolecules bring about the structural and functional diversity that are present in all life forms. While individual protein and DNA molecules exhibit an impressive set of properties their assemblies are by far more elaborate and sophisticated since they can create unique microenvironments and interfaces. However, pinning down or predicting the origins for any synergistic interactions is challenging due to the complexity of the constructs and the inability to discern between identical subcomponents. Motivated by this challenge our group aims to develop new methods and approaches for the controlled assembly of biomolecules that exhibit novel characteristics.

On the same time, we aim to expand the scope of known protein-DNA interactions while focusing on non-canonical G-quadruplex DNA structures. Although these structures are abundant in nature and associated with fundamental biological processes, the biomolecular interactions that control their affinity and specificity towards proteins are still largely underexplored. Our approach is two-fold: elucidating new structures of protein-G-quadruplex complexes on the one hand and exploring the protein the molecular basis for G-quadruplex recognition.

To these ends we will use an interdisciplinary approach drawing inspiration and expertise both from the world of chemistry and synthetic biology. Among these will be a broad range of tools including chemical synthesis, molecular biology, spectroscopy, single crystal X-ray crystallography and other techniques to characterize biophysical and photophysical properties.