Methods

The complexities of pathogenesis, immune regulation, allosteric mechanisms, and drug development require a broad range of state-of-the-art techniques of cell- and molecular biology, biochemistry, structural biology, experimental and theoretical chemistry, physics, enzymology, and others. Such an interdisciplinary approach, in its turn, requires modern research platforms that enable easy access to the research facilities and expertizes. Our current network of cooperation partners and infrastructures involves the Institutes for Biophysical Chemistry, Clinical Biochemistry, Virology, ZFA Metabolomics (MHH), Helmholtz Center for Infection Research, Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine, the Universities of Dresden, Aarhus (Denmark), and Warwick (UK), Gene Center in München, the synchrotron facilities DESY/Petra-III (Hamburg), ESRF (Grenoble), SOLEIL (Paris), the EU-funded structural biology project iNEXT, and TRAIN/BMWZ biomedical translation alliance in Lower Saxony.

Furthermore, in the course of our studies, we developed a novel mechanism-based rational method to discover, validate, and target specific allosteric regulation sites (Cramer et al., 2018, ACS Catalysis. 8:2683-2692), which has been successfully applied in our projects. This method can help extend the range of new therapeutic targets, speed up the development of antimicrobials and immunomodulatory agents, and enhance the translational aspects of basic research.