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| Name |
Baker, David |
| Location
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University of Washington |
| Primary Field
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Biophysics and Computational Biology |
 Election Citation
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Baker has made seminal contributions to our understanding of how a protein's amino acid sequence dictates its three-dimensional structure. His work has shown that a protein's "contact order" influences its rate of folding, and he has developed computational methods to predict the structures of natural and designed proteins. |
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Research Interests
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We seek to develop robust methods for predicting and designing macromolecular structures and interactions and to apply these methods to produce accurate models of naturally occurring proteins and to generate novel proteins with new and useful functions. To improve our computational methods we are working to improve both the physical model of the energetics of inter and intramolecular interactions which underlie our calculations and the search algorithms we use to identify very low energy protein structures. Our current goals include predicting protein structures with high accuracy starting from sequence information alone, designing new enzymes for catalyzing any desired chemical reaction, and designing a vaccine for HIV. |
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