News |
|
Dec 2021: Our review of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein structural biology is now published in ACS Infectious Diseases. | "Structure
and Mutations of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein: A
Focused Overview". In press in ACS
Infectious Diseases |
June 2021: Our review of the FIST
model of familial Alzheimer's disease is now in press. |
"Understanding
familial Alzheimer's disease: The fit-stay-trim
mechanism of γ-secretase" in press in WIRES
Comput. Mol. Sci. |
Apr 2021: Our new method - SimBa - for
computing protein stability effects of mutations is
published. |
"Three Simple
Properties Explain Protein Stability Change upon
Mutation" in JCIM |
Feb 2021: Our study investigating
precision in protein stability calculation out
(collaboration with Prof Blundell @ Cambridge) |
"A base measure
of precision for protein stability predictors:
structural sensitivity" in BMC
Bioinformatics |
Jan 2021: Our new work on AD drugs
published |
"Computational
prediction and molecular mechanism of γ-secretase
modulators" in European
Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences |
Aug 2020: Our collaboration with Prof
Blundell published |
"Systematic Investigation of the Data Set Dependency of Protein Stability Predictors" published in JCIM |
Mar 2020: Our new paper on protein cryo-EM effects out | Published in PCCP
|
Jan 2020: Welcome to Octav Caldaruru,
Ph.D. |
Octav will work on new computer models for proteins |
Jan 2019: Welcome to Kaylanashis Jana,
Ph.D. |
Kalyan will
work on computational and theoretical descriptions of
protein stability |
June 2018: Welcome to Budheswar
Dehury, Ph.D. |
BUdheswar will work as a postdoc on predicting Alzheimer's disease-causing mutations |
May 2018: We have been funded by DFF
- thanks! |
Humble thanks to DFF and the Danish taxpayers for supporting our project on developing new protein stability prediction tools |
April-May 2018: Kasper is on family leave from work. | |
Feb 1, 2018. Ning Tang joins our lab
as postdoctoral researcher - Welcome! |
Ning Tang will work on understanding and developing new medicine targeting the large membrane protein complex gamma secretase involved in Alzheimer's Disease (funded by DFF). |
Jan 1, 2018. Rukmankesh will join our group as postdoctoral researcher - Welcome! | Rukmankesh will
study laccases in collaboration with Prof. Anne Meyer,
DTU Chemical Engineering - the project is funded by
DFF. |
Dec 12, 2017. Arun will defend his ph.d. thesis on proteins in Alzheimer's Disease. | Arun has studied
proteins in Alzheimer's Disease both
experimentally and computationally and published six
papers in three years, taken half a year of courses
and been at two conferences. |
Dec 7, 2017. NNF awards us funding for a two-years postdoc. Thanks! | The project will explore the causes and disease properties of mutations in Alzheimer's disease. |
July 4, 2017. Kasper speaks at the EICC4 conference |
Speaking on
the role of metal ions in Alzheimer's disease |
May 8, 2017. Kasper will speak at the
Danish
Annual meeting for Neuroscience |
Speaking on
the ´molecular causes of ALzheimer's from
patient-protein correlations |
March 2017. Review
of heme's amazing chemical properties and role in life
is out. |
Heme is the
central oxygen manager of life on our planet;
without it, it would be hard to imagine oxygen-based
life as we know it. Why is heme so special? The
review summarizes why. |
Feb 2017. Benchmarking
DFT for gold: First detailed benchmark of DFT's
ability to describe diverse chemical bonds to gold |
DFT studies
of gold chemistry are common and diverse - but how
accurate are they? This
paper reports a detailed comparison of
commonly used density functionals applied to gold
chemistry |
Jul 2016. Kasper speaks at the International Conference on Porphyrins and Phthalocyanins. | Kasper will
speak on the evolution of heme from quantum
mechanics of spin crossover to oxygen storage in
diving whales |
Apr 2016. Protein
stability effects are universal: An application
towards myoglobin of diving whales. |
We report the discovery of generic stability relaxation and a new model that can account for multi-site protein variants. |
Feb 2016. The general mess of Aβ (new
work published in Alzheimer & Dementia). |
Widely used biochemical data of β-amyloid used to support the amyloid hypothesis are heterogeneous and show no relationship to clinical outcome, as shown in our meta analysis. Toxicity and aggregation propensity do not correlate with clinical data and probably do not reflect the human disease. |
Sep 2015. The quest for the structure of
β-amyloid (new
work published in ChemPhysChem) |
Commonly used force fields produce major differences in structures of the disordered β-amyloid. We identify the ensembles that best explain experimental NMR and CD data, providing a model of the true β-amyloid ensemble relevant for treating Alzheimer’s disease. |
July 2015. Attending the ICCB conference in Kauai, Hawaii, July 2 to 6. | At
this meeting,
Kasper talks about our results on the mechanisms that
control the Fe-O bond in biological processes. |
June 2015. Attending the EMBO neurodegeneration meeting in Heidelberg June 14-17. | At the
EMBO
symposium in Heidelberg, we present our
Proteostatic exhaustion mechanism of ALS, that
increased proteome maintenance energy is the
cause of ALS, from analysis of ALS-causing SOD1
mutations. |
March 2015. Molecular Causes of ALS: Coupling protein energy to real patient data for carriers of SOD1 variants suggest that proteome energy contributes to disease. | In the
most
systematic analysis of SOD1 variants so far, we
find that patient survival correlates strongly with
stability, charge, and in particular misfolded protein
copies, suggesting a new theory of neurodegeneration
caused by proteome exhaustion. |
Feb 2015. New mechanism of laccase inhibition: Halides impair critical reorganization energies. | Laccases,industrially
important copper enzymes, are inhibited by small
anions, thought to bind to copper and block
reactivity. We
identified a new mechanism of this inhibition
due to changes in the redox properties, distinct from
e.g. channel blocking or conformation change. It
explains the experimental stronger inhibition of
fluoride vs. chloride. |
Nov 2014. New patent WO2014167112 for synthesizing sugars | Together
with researchers at DTU Chemical Engineering, we have
invented
a new mutant trans sialidase with enhanced
ability to transfer and build sugars relevant to
functional food ingredients. |
Nov 2014. First relation between real patient data and biochemical properties of genetic variants causing Alzheimer's disease | We
have shown
how clinical patient data of carriers of genetic
variants (age of disease onset) can be correlated
directly with chemical properties of the amyloid
mutants that the patients carry. Disordered
hydrophobic exposure correlate with disease
characteristics, the first identified such correlation
in Alzheimer's Disease. |
Oct 2014. Søren Brander successfully defends his Ph.D. thesis. Congratulations! | Søren's
work has resulted in the discovery of several
bacterial "laccases"by genome mining of extremophilic
organisms. One of the laccases shows improved
alkaline and salt tolerance (from B. clausii),
and another has the second-highest
thermostability ever measured for a laccase.
Both serve as important new frameworks for laccase
optimization far away in sequence space from known
industrial laccases. |
Sep 2014. Arun joins our group as a ph.d. student to work on proteins involved in Alzheimer's disease. | We are making
amyloid mutants in the lab and pinpoint their disease
mechanism by molecular simulations. |
Dec 2013. Kasper joins the Management commitee of the EU-sponsored COST action on spin states in biochemistry and technology | Spin states serve a major and
central role in life, including the use of all molecular
oxygen from the air, which, as we have shown
together with Prof. Ulf Ryde, depnds critically on
maintaing energy levels close together during these
processes. Still, we do not understand this inherently
quantum-mechnical phenomenon very well -- The COST
action will help! |
Jun 2013. Pouria Dasmeh successfully defends his Ph.D. thesis. Congratulations! | How
does a protein evolve? Why do the proteins that
constitute all living matter around us have exactly
those shapes and amino acids that they have? How much
is random, how much is specifically required , and how
was the selection done? Pouria's work on the
evolution of myoglobin, bridging from the basic
chemistry to the full organism in diving mammals,
is the first of its kind. |
Jan 2013. New review on theoretical inorganic chemistry: "Consistent descriptions of metal–ligand bonds and spin-crossover in inorganic chemistry" | This
review describes the "gos" and "no-gos" in the
field of modelling inorganic chemistry, including the
difficult challenge of spin states. |
Dec 2012. Our research is described in the Danish newspaper Politiken. | "New
Danish theory can help curing Alzheimer's Disease" (Ny dansk teori kan styrke kampen mod Alzheimers) Major Danish newspaper Politiken Dec 9, 2012 |
Oct 2012. New review in Chemical Reviews on "Bioinorganic Chemistry of Alzheimer's Disease" | This
review summarizes the current state of
biochemistry, including the centra lrole played by
iron, zinc, and copper, in Alzheimer's Disease, and
collects major combined evidence to argue that zinc
underlies the entire amyloid balance previously
considered the underlying cause of Alzheimer. |
Sep 2012. Kasper speaks as invited speaker at the CECAM workshop in Zaragoza, Sep 18-21. | |
Copyright 2014. Kasper P. Kepp. |