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Tracy Yu

BMMB Graduate Student - Okafor Lab
Tracy Yu.
The Okafor Lab

About Me

I am an international student from Hong Kong. I studied at Penn State Altoona for my undergrad. 

 

Research Interests

I am interested to know how proteins are allosterically regulated using computational and experimental approaches. 

 

Research Summary

We want to understand how proteins are allosterically regulated. Nuclear receptors are a powerful model system for this purpose. Nuclear receptors can bind ligands that have diverse structures, which can modulate the structure and dynamics of the receptor to achieve various transcriptional outcomes. We also know that small modifications to a ligand scaffold can lead to large changes in transcriptional outcomes. None of these phenomena are well understood and the goal of our research is to combine molecular dynamics simulations with experiments to understand how ligands alter structure and dynamics of receptors, how these structural/dynamic changes alter coregulator recruitment, and how these changes in receptor dynamics and coregulator recruitment dictate DNA binding preferences. 

 

Programs and Training Centers

 

Honors and Awards

  • Schreyer Honors Student 2019