Successful ARC Discovery Project bid

Dr Lars Goerigk is Co-Chief Investigator with Drs Sebastian Furness (University of Queensland, lead investigator) and Chris Ritchie (Monash University) on a successful 2023 Discovery Project funded for four years by the Australian Research Council. International partner investigators are Prof. Robert Prosser (University of Toronto) and Asst. Prof. Stpehane Aloise (University of Lille). Read the summary of this highly interdisciplinary project below:

Proteins perform almost every task that enables the amazing complexity of cellular and whole organism physiology. These molecular machines perform this incredible array of tasks due to their ability to dynamically change shape. For the vast majority of these machines, we can only view a snapshot of the possible shapes they can adopt and can’t monitor how they change from one shape to another, which is critical for their functioning. This project aims to develop and apply a completely new method to visualise dynamic changes in protein shape which is not possible with current techniques. This will allow us to provide a new description and understanding of the function of proteins, which is fundamental to all biology.