Source: Interfolio F180
Marco Mravic
Research Focus
Mravic lab uses protein design and integrative computational approaches to challenge our understanding of biomolecular structure, function, and physical chemistry.
The three focus areas of our group are
(1) Designing small synthetic membrane proteins as simple model systems to test fundamental biophysical questions governing molecular structure and function.
(2) De novo design and development of chemical biology tools targeting membrane proteins directly at their lipid-embedded regions to probe disease molecular mechanism and therapeutic opportunities.
(3) Molecular modeling and dynamics simulations that integrate diverse experimental data to better understand critical molecular events at cellular membranes
Our protein design efforts aim to test and establish chemical 'rules' for protien structure and function: rules we hypothesize through merging cellular and biophysical experiments with bioinformatics, all-atom simulations, and theoretical energy calculations. Our lab's mission is to produce simple model molecules custom-made to investigate important biophysical principles underlying protein structure and activity in lipid as well as identify molecular determinants of disease. The lab's experimental expertise are highly multi-disciplinary, ranging from total protein chemical synthesis, X-ray crystallography, solution NMR, cell functional assays, and in vitro biophysics.
Education
B.S. (Chemical Engineering), University of California, Los Angeles, 2014Ph.D. (Molecular Biophysics), University of California, San Francisco, 2020
Awards & Professional Activities
Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) U*Star Trainee, 2012-14, UCLAHoward Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Gilliam Fellow, 2017-20, UCSF
Selected Publications
Mravic, Marco; Thomaston, Jessica L.; Tucker, Maxwell; Solomon, Paige E.; Liu, Lijun; Degrado, William F. Packing of apolar side chains enables accurate design of highly stable membrane proteins.. Science (New York, N.Y.) 2019, 363, 1418-1423.
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Litvinov, Rustem I.; Mravic, Marco; Zhu, Hua; Weisel, John W.; Degrado, William F.; Bennett, Joel S. Unique transmembrane domain interactions differentially modulate integrin avß3 and aIIbß3 function.. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2019, 116, 12295-12300.
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Dang, Bobo; Mravic, Marco; Hu, Hailin; Schmidt, Nathan W.; Mensa, Bruk; Degrado, William F. SNAC-tag for Sequence-specific Chemical Protein Cleavage.. Nature methods 2019, 16, 319-322.
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Mravic, Marco; Hu, Hailin; Lu, Zhenwei; Bennett, Joel S.; Sanders, Charles R.; Orr, A W.; Degrado, William F. De novo designed transmembrane peptides activating the a5ß1 integrin.. Protein engineering, design & selection : PEDS 2018, 31, 181-190.
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Maillie, Colleen; Golden, Jay; Wilson, Ian A.; Ward, Andrew B.; Mravic, Marco Ab initioprediction of specific phospholipid complexes and membrane association of HIV-1 MPER antibodies by multi-scale simulations. eLife (Reviewed Preprint) 2023.
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Mravic, Marco; Le, H; Kratochvil, H T.; Hu, H; Nick, S E.; Bai, W; Edwards, A; Jo, H; Wu, Y; DiMaio, D; DeGrado, W F. Designed Transmembrane Proteins Inhibit the Erythropoietin Receptor in a Custom Binding Topology. Nature Chemical Biology 2024.