The Project has four objectives:
- To establish validated reference methods based on existing (state-of-the-art) and emerging methods by developing cohesive measurement strategies for accurate biomolecular structure-function determination under native and near-native (water) conditions with uncertainties of <5%.
- To provide a set of biomolecular measurands by fully characterising peptide systems in relation to specific disease-related activities using experimental models of peptide-membrane interactions.
- To develop high-resolution and imaging strategies for accurate biomolecular measurements in cellular environments with uncertainties <5%. Quantitative relationships between structural parameters (e.g. folding, tertiary contacts) and biomolecular cause of disease will be established.
- To provide a measurement-based rationale for enabling sequence-to-function prediction by translating obtained structure-activity relationships into generic sequence templates and providing computational refinement of these templates correlated with established measurands. Low-resolution and high-resolution methods will be combined into one measurement continuum enabling systemic structural measurements of peptides. The molecular dynamics of peptide-membrane interactions with atomic accuracies will be performed to address structure-activity relationships. An algorithm describing the relationship between the parameters measured for the chosen peptide-membrane models will be created.
Impact
Formulating standardisation techniques as one coherent approach to underpin a consolidated metrology infrastructure at the European level that will promote and support major downstream economic and healthcare impacts.
This JRP will maintain on-going links with key stakeholders and the end-users of the project and will participate in standardisation activities and engage with regulatory bodies (e.g. JCTLM-WG1, Reference Materials and Measurement Methods/Procedures, and JCTLM-WG2, Reference Measurement Services, National Institutes of Standards). These links will be extended to involve new collaborators from industry and clinical institutions.
