Raiji Kawade (D2), Departments of Bioengineering, received Student Presentation Award at the 56th Biophysical Society of Japan

On 17th September 2018, Raiji Kawade (D2), Departments of Bioengineering, received Student Presentation Award at the 56th Biophysical Society of Japan.

< About awarded research>
Phosphorylation plays critical roles in a wide range of cellular processes such as signaling and on/off switching of interactions.
However, most of the previous studies focusing on the recognition mechanism assumed that the protonation state of a phosphorylated amino acid was PO₃^2- despite the fact that at physiological pH, the phosphate group (pKa ~7) would exist as an equilibrium mixture of PO₃^2– and the singly protonated state (PO₃H–).
We performed MD simulations of 4 different proteins-phosphorylated peptide complexes both in the PO₃^2- and PO₃H- states. Our study suggested PO₃^2- was more preferable to PO₃H- in the interactions due to the larger mobility and higher amount of charge of the phosphate group in the PO₃^2- state.

< Your impression & future plan>
I am very honored to hear that. I very grateful for everyone’s help.
With this study, I will continue my work for the engineering and designing antibodies.