Our post-doctoral fellow, Fanni Sebák was awarded the special prize of the Kisfaludy Lajos Foundation for the publication “Selective 1Hα NMR Methods Reveal Functionally Relevant Proline cis/trans Isomers in Intrinsically Disordered Proteins: Characterization of Minor Forms, Effects of Phosphorylation, and Occurrence in Proteome”. This prize is awarded to PhD students and postdocs for outstanding work and publications in the field of pharmaceutical research.
Our research group's second-year PhD student, Nándor Papp, was awarded the Egis Excellence Scholarship in the year 2023. He won the scholarship in connection with the investigation of protein-protein interactions related to his research topic. The research not only encompasses the atomic-level understanding of protein-protein interactions but also involves the development of protein expression techniques and the application of computer-based structure prediction methods.
Fanni Sebák won a post-doctoral grant (“PD OTKA”) for her research project titled “New insights in the development of drug delivery systems: introduction of modern NMR methods for structural characterization and in vitro internalization studies”.
We participated at the annual meeting of the Hungarian NMR Discussion group in Balatonszemes. Lilla Szabó had her successful doctoral pre-defense and Dániel Kovács was awarded the Young Researcher’s Presentation Prize for his talk.
In our recently published paper, we investigated proline cis-trans isomerization in intrinsically disordered proteins and peptides as the different proline conformational states can be responsible for different biological functions. We conducted statistical analysis regarding the Pro occurrence in IDPs from the DisProt database (https://disprot.org/) and characterized the amino acid composition of the Pro and Pro-Pro neighborhood. As DisProt does not contain information on the amount of cis-Pro isomers, we updated and expanded our previous dataset [Sebák, 2022, Angew Chem Int Ed] to the i±4 proline neighbors to test whether long-range interactions affect cis-Pro formation. Further on, we designed 12-15 residues long peptides with special attention on aromatic and positively charged sidechains and determined the cis-Pro ratio to validate the regularities obtained from the statistical analysis. The paper can be read in the Protein Folding, Misfolding, Non-Folding, and Assembly Special Issue of Frontiers in Bioscience Landmark.
Andrea Bodor was voted the Researcher of the year 2022 at the Chemistry Institute of ELTE.
Our review article regarding an overview of random coil chemical shift (RCCS) prediction has been recently published in RSC Advances. In this study we show that the selection of RCCSs is a crucial step in applying the secondary chemical shift (SCS) method especially during the assessment of secondary structural propensities of intrinsically disordered proteins. We discuss in detail the nearest neighbour-, pH- and temperature correction approaches, and we describe and explain the differences in secondary structural propensity identification depending on the RCCS predictor used. We propose a way of selecting the most consensual RCCS predictors out of a group of predictors using the sum of ranking differences and compare ranks to random numbers (SRD-CRRN) method. We outline a good practice of using multiple RCCS predictors in unison for a sound characterization of structural propensities in IDPs.
In December 2022, our paper in Analytical Chemistry was chosen as "Selected publications of the month" by the Department of Chemical Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. A summary of the work in Hungarian is available here.
The 43rd annual meeting of the Division of Magnetic Resonance of the German Chemical Society (FGMR) was held in Karlsruhe,Germany with three partner countries Austria, Switzerland and Hungary. Andrea Bodor gave an oral presentation, and 3 members of our group presented posters.
A workshop about HADDOCK was organised at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University in collaboration with BioExcel. Training in the software was provided by Prof. Alexandre Bonvin. 3 members of our groups presented posters during the event.
Congratulations to Fanni Sebák for successfully defending her PhD thesis.
Csenge Lilla Szabó, Fanni Sebák, Andrea Bodor
Monitoring protein global and local parameters in unfolding and in binding studies: the extended applicability of
the diffusion coefficient – molecular size empirical relations
Anal. Chem., 2022 | DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.2c00481
Our colleague, Fanni Sebák received the Publication Award of the ELTE Institute of Chemistry.
Congratulations to the BSc (Ibolya Grácin) and MSc (Okari Erick Onyiego, Nándor Papp, Zsófia Varga) students for the successful defences of their thesis works.
Our second-year PhD student, Dániel Kovács successfully completed his PhD complex exam this semester.
Our article has been recently accepted as a “Hot Paper” in the Angewandte Chemie International Edition. We introduced new, 1Hα-detected NMR methods that enable a fast and easy way for the characterization of proline cis/trans isomerization states in disordered proteins. The results can give a better insight into the detection and function of these isomeric forms, as we have shown on the example of tumorsuppressor p53TAD1-60. This research was conducted in cooperation with the groups of Prof. László Nyitray from the Biochemistry Department and with Prof. Burkhard Luy from the Karlsruher Institute of Technology (KIT, Germany) and Dr. Wolfgang Bermel from Bruker company (Germany).
Fanni Sebák, Péter Ecsédi, Wolfgang Bermel, Burkhard Luy, László Nyitray, Andrea Bodor
Selective 1Hα NMR Methods Reveal Functionally Relevant Proline cis/trans Isomers in Intrinsically Disordered Proteins: Characterization of Minor Forms, Effects of Phosphorylation, and Occurrence in Proteome
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed, 2021 | DOI: 10.1002/anie.202108361
The publication had an impact in national and international media.
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20211028/New-method-reveals-changes-in-protein-structure-more-efficiently-and-accurately-than-before.aspx
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/933038
https://bioengineer.org/new-method-helps-to-understand-the-development-of-cancer-and-neurodegenerative-diseases/
https://www.elte.hu/content/uj-modszer-a-rak-es-neurodegenerativ-betegsegek-megerteseert.t.24537
https://hvg.hu/tudomany/20211109-rakos-neurodegenerativ-betegsegek-kialakulasa-nmr-spektroszkopia
https://www.origo.hu/tudomany/20211104-uj-modszer-a-rakos-es-neurodegenerativ-betegsegek-kialakulasanak-megerteseert.html
