Stephen Fried
Chemistry
Bio-X SIGF Fellow 2012/2013
Profs. Steven Boxer (Chemistry) and Vijay Pande (Chemistry)

If the cell is a self-running city, then proteins are the nano-robots that carry out all the vital functions that keep the city alive and running.  Amazingly, the only “program” proteins need to perform their respective operations is the laws of physics, which endow them with specific movements.  Understanding how proteins’ motions enable their respective functions has been a longstanding question in molecular biophysics; one barrier has been that insights from experiment and theory are difficult to synthesize.  Stephen’s research is aimed at opening a new dialogue between experiment and theory by utilizing a Markov state model description.  By combining multiple  approaches, we can hope to build more physically realistic models and obtain a more rigorous understanding of protein function.