Institute of Protein Biochemistry, CNR.

Via P. Castellino, 111 - 80131 Napoli

2013-2014 IBP Seminar Series

CNR Conference Room

Friday, December 20th, 2013 at 11:00

Prof. Franca Fraternali

King's College London, UK

"Insights into structure properties of protein complexes and impact of gene variants"

Host: Dr Donatella de Pascale

Tel. 081-6132314; e-mail: d.depascale@ibp.cnr.it

Franca Fraternali studied physical chemistry at the University of Naples before starting an EMBO Fellowship at ETH Zurich. She did postdoctoral work in Strasbourg and at the EMBL Heidelberg. In 2000 she obtained a staff position in the Mathematical Biology Division of the National Institute for Medical Research (MRC NIMR London). Since 2005 she has established her own group at King’s College London within the Randall Division.

Fraternali specialises in computer simulations of proteins and nucleic acids. A main focus has been the analysis of protein-protein interaction (PPI) data and their structural properties using methods from structural bioinformatics. In collaboration with W. van Gunsteren (ETH Zürich) she has developed an implicit solvation model widely used for the study of folding and unfolding of peptides and proteins. Her methods are part of one of the most popular simulation programs (Gromos11), as well as software widely used for the calculation of PPI 3D-complexes (POPSComp). Recently she has focused her work on computational and statistical methods for the analysis of PPI networks and dynamics.

Fraternali is on the editorial boards of PloS ONE, Frontiers in Genetics and Proteomics, and is an executive committee member of the Thomas Young Centre. Fraternali is PI or co-PI on grants from the BBSRC, Cancer Research UK and the Wellcome and Leverhulme Trusts. She has strong research connections with ETH Zürich, France, Italy and the USA.