Dan Vanatta

Mentors: Lynette Cegelski and Vijay Pande

Project Title: Conformational Switching of Signaling Proteins

Biography
Dan Vanatta was born and raised in San Jose California.  He has his undergraduate degree in chemistry from UC Berkeley where he preformed research focusing on inorganic heavy metal complexes with Prof. Richard Andersen and a project involving statistical mechanics on an Ising lattice with Prof. Phillip Geissler.  Dan is currently a graduate student in the Stanford Chemistry department working in the lab of Prof. Vijay Pande.

Research Summary
This project focuses on extending and improving protein folding methods to predict conformational change pathways between active and inactive state of nitrogen regulatory protein C (NtrC). By employing unbiased Markov State Model based molecular dynamics simulations, we predict a new dynamic picture of the activation of a key bacterial signaling protein NtrC, involving a complex network of molecular switches. These results are consistent with experimental observations and predict new mutants that could be used for validation of the mechanism. Moreover, these results suggest a novel mechanistic paradigm for conformational switching.