QCRG

Structural Biology Consortium

The recent interactome study published by the QCRG has identified over 300 proteins in human cells which interact with SARS CoV2 proteins shining light on many cellular pathways that the virus impinges on. To gain molecular understanding of these interactions we have organized the QCRG Structural Biology Consortium. The consortium currently includes around 60 people from over 15 labs at UCSF and is mostly driven by the volunteer effort on the part of graduate students, postdocs and faculty.

Such organization is unprecedented and incredibly powerful as it allows for an unhindered flow of ideas and expertise. It also provides access to the technology and equipment available throughout this community. Utilizing the latest advances in protein expression, purification, crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy we have established a pipeline through which we prioritize the viral-host protein complexes, express and quickly screen them for most tractable ones and enter such candidates into either crystallography or cryoEM trials.

We also have a particular focus in leveraging high throughput x-ray crystallography for drug discovery. Ultimately, as a consortium we have the knowledge, the equipment, the organization, the man power and the passion to rapidly bring mechanistic molecular understanding to the way CoV2 hijacks the human cells indubitably leading to novel approaches to inhibit SARS CoV2 and deleterious host responses.

PIs:
David Agard
Yifan Cheng
Seemay Chou
Charly Craik
Alan Frankel
James Fraser
Adam Frost
John Gross
Natalia Jura
Tanja Kortemme
Aashish Manglik
Andrej Sali
Dan Southworth
Robert Stroud
Oren Rosenberg
Kliment A Verba
Jim Wells

Students/Postdocs/Scientists/Staff:
Daniel Asarnow
Caleigh Azumaya
Ruchika Bajaj
Christian Billesboelle
Julian Braxton
David Bulkley
Melody Campbell
Jen Chen
Cynthia Chio
Un Seng Chio
Rose Citron
Ishan Deshpande
Roberto Efraín Díaz
Amy Diallo
Sasha Dickinson
Devan Diwanji
Loan Doan
Bryan Faust
Sebastian Flores
Meghna Gupta
Nadia Herrera
Nick Hoppe
Mingliang Jin
Kate Kim
Huong Kratochvil
Victor Lam
Fei Li
Junrui Li
Yang Li
Yen-Li Li
Xi Liu
Yanxin Liu
Megan Lo
Liam McKay
Greg Merz
Michelle Moritz
Henry Nguyen
Eliza Nieweglowska
Chimno Nnadi
Carlos Nowotny
Tristan Owens
Joana Paulino
Jessie Peters
Tom Pospiech
Sergei Pourmal
Cristina Puchades
Maliheh Safari
Smriti Sangwan
Ursula Schulze-Gahmen
Amber Smith
Ming Sun
Mariano Tabios
Mike Thompson
Aye Thwin
Eric Tse
Erron Titus
Raphael Trenker
Tsz Kin Martin Tsui
Stephanie Wankowicz
Feng Wang
Natalie Whitis
Iris Young
Zanlin Yu
Jianhua Zhao
Kaihua Zhang
Sunny Zhang
Fengbo Zhou

Benchling is a cloud-based R&D data management and collaboration platform powering innovative research across biological modalities. It offers unified applications that are purpose-built for biologists and used across pharmaceutical companies, emerging biotechs, and scientists around the world. Read more here.

If you have any questions please reach out to us:

Kliment Verba: Kliment.Verba@ucsf.edu
Oren Rosenberg: Oren.Rosenberg@ucsf.edu

We need visionary funders to support this unprecedented collaboration of visionary scientists. It may be that this human tragedy is what finally unifies us to find a solution together.