Sophie Gobeil, Département de biochimie, microbiologie et bio-informatique
I am an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Bioinformatics of the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Université Laval. I am affiliated with the Institute of Integrative Biology and Systems (IBIS) and a member of PROTEO (The Quebec Network for Research on Protein Function, Engineering, and Applications; https://proteo.ca/en/) and the Université Laval Infectious Disease Research Center (https://www.cri.ulaval.ca/en/). As a biochemist and structural biologist, I am interested in the role of proteins’ conformational dynamics (i.e. motions) towards their function, evolution, and in the formation of protein-protein interactions.
Current research projects within my group investigate the role of proteins structural dynamics in: (1) promoting immune evasion, (2) formation of antigen-antibody interface and this, for protein engineering and therapeutics design applications, and (3) in host-pathogen interactions. Our approach relies on an integrative structural biology pipeline combining X-ray crystallography, cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM), and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) methodologies, coupled with biochemical and biophysical protein characterization assays.