About Us

The Gur Biomolecular Engineering Laboratory specializes in solving problems at the interface of medicine, biology and engineering, by applying computational modeling and statistical thermodynamics methods. Our research interests include (i) protein systems that are known or potential drug targets and (ii) proteins having complex functional machineries comparable to macro scaled machines we encounter in daily life. By performing all atom molecular dynamics simulations, we elucidate the functional machinery at atomic detail, understand how diseases related mutations affect protein structure, dynamics and function, and explore and test novel therapeutic strategies to inhibit/regulate proteins function. Our lab applies protein engineering to alter the machinery of motor proteins and the binding mechanism of nanobodies, and by doing so opening new routes for their potential usage in nanotechnological and medical applications. We currently investigate HLA-B51 as potential drug target for Behçet’s disease and design Cell Penetrating Peptide based novel drugs targeting HLA-B51, explore the effect of missense mutations observed in Colon and Breast cancers patients on CHK2 and Mutsα function and contribute to the determination of the cancer association of these mutations for early cancer warning, analyze the effect of SARS-CoV-2 variation on the nanobody effectivity and engineer novel nanobodies targeting variant SARS-CoV-2 Spike proteins, model the functional machinery of the nano scaled biological engines known as motor proteins, how these motors are regulated by microtubule associated proteins, and engineer dynein motor protein based biological nanowalkers.