Title: New directions in structural studies of ion channels and their modulation by disulfide-rich peptides 

Speaker: Assoc. Prof Mehdi Mobli

Ion channels and their structural relatives comprise one of the largest superfamilies of signal transduction proteins. Unsurprisingly, these ion channels are also among the most common drug targets. Ion channels, however, have proven particularly recalcitrant to traditional drug discovery approaches and our work seeks to address this through improved understanding of the structure and function of these channels.  

Animal venoms have proven a rich source of ion-channel modulators, eliciting diverse pharmacological responses in their target hosts. Disulfide-rich peptides, within venoms, are of particular interest as they often act through an allosteric mechanism that capture elusive states of ion channels – important both pharmacologically and in improving our understanding of channel function.  

I will present recent work from our group, including (1) engineering a new system for generating lipid bilayer nanodiscs (2) bivalent peptide discovery efforts, as well as (3) our work on understanding the structural basis of peptide binding to cell memrbanes and ion channel receptor sites.