The Role of Protein Folding and Conformation in Disease

Dear Colleagues,

Proteins are the biological workhorses that carry out vital functions in every cell. To carry out their task, proteins must fold into a complex three-dimensional structure. Many of the conformations that proteins can exhibit are crucial for their countless functions and are required to carry out processes that are necessary for life. Unfortunately, ageing, metabolic stress, genetic mutations, etc. can cause the alteration of protein conformations, which leads to diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease, as well as cystic fibrosis and some forms of cancer, liver, heart and kidney disease.

During past several decades many new methods have been developed for computer simulations of protein folding and data analyses as well as novel experimental tools for probing protein folding with high temporal and spatial resolution. These methods and tools are employed to study the role played by protein folding and misfolding in human diseases in vitro. However, the presence of a high concentration of other macromolecules in the cell can drastically alter protein folding pathways, which may require a development of more sophisticated new biophysical methods.

We encourage submission of original full research papers as well as review articles dealing with the development and application of novel computational and experimental methodologies to understand the reasons of the emergence of aberrant protein conformations, and how to fix protein architecture to cure protein misfolding diseases.

Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Novel insights in the molecular mechanisms of protein misfolding and amyloid formation and development of therapeutics;
• Protein-lipid interactions to understand how lipids modulate the toxicity and aggregation of proteins;
• Protein folding and misfolding in a cellular context;
• Deep learning models for protein misfolding diseases;
• Post-translational modifications in protein misfolding diseases;
• New molecular biomarkers of neurodegenerative.

Dr. Gia G. Maisuradze
Guest Editor

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• protein folding
• protein misfolding/aggregation
• protein conformation