Program
14.15-15.00   The Simple QTY Code for Protein Design, Shuguang Zhang, MIT Media Lab.
15.00-15.15 Coffee and cinnemon bun
15.15-16.00 From Supramolecular Chemistry towards Adaptive Chemistry, Jean-Marie Lehn, ISIS, Université de Strasbourg, France.
 

The Simple QTY Code for Protein Design
Shuguang Zhang
MIT Media Lab

In 2011, Shuguang Zhang conceived the QTY code to design water-soluble membrane
proteins. The QTY code is based on two key molecular structural facts: 1) all 20 amino acids
are found in natural alpha-helices; 2) several amino acids share striking structural similarities
despite their different chemical properties: glutamine (Q) vs leucine (L); threonine (T) vs valine
(V); and tyrosine (Y) vs phenylalanine (F). The simple QTY code has big impact for designs
of water-soluble variants of water-insoluble membrane proteins including GPCRs, glucose
transporters, solute carrier transporters, ABC transporters, potassium ion channels, betabarrel
outer membrane proteins, and perhaps aggregated proteins.

Zhang, S., et al (2018) QTY code enables design of detergent-free chemokine receptors that retain
ligand-binding activities. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 115 (37) E8652-E8659.
The QTY code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QTY_Code

Shuguang Zhang received his Ph.D. from University of California at Santa Barbara.
Zhang won a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship and Wilhelm Exner Medal of Austria. He was elected to
the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2010, the US National Academy of Inventors in 2013, and the
European Academy of Science and Arts in 2021. In 2020, he received the Emil Thomas Kaiser Award
from the Protein Society.
Zhang has published over 200 scientific papers cited over 39,200 times, h-index 95.

From Supramolecular Chemistry Towards Adaptive Chemistry
Jean-Marie Lehn
ISIS, Université de Strasbourg, France 

Supramolecular chemistry is intrinsically a dynamic chemistry in view of the lability of the interactions connecting the molecular components of a supramolecular species and the resulting ability to exchange components. The same holds for molecular chemistry when the molecular entity contains covalent bonds that may form and break reversibly. These features allow for a continuous change in constitution by reorganization and exchange of building blocks and define a Constitutional Dynamic Chemistry (CDC) covering both the molecular and supramolecular levels.

CDC takes advantage of dynamic diversity to allow variation and selection and operates on dynamic constitutional diversity in response to either internal or external factors to achieve adaptation.

      It generates networks of dynamically interconverting constituents, constitutional dynamic networks, that may respond to perturbations by physical stimuli or to chemical effectors. Of special interest is the case where the driving force is an increase in order. 

       The implementation of these concepts points to the emergence of adaptive and evolutive chemistry, towards systems of increasing complexity. 

References

• Lehn, J.-M., Supramolecular Chemistry: Concepts and Perspectives, VCH Weinheim, 1995.
• Lehn, J.-M., Dynamic combinatorial chemistry and virtual combinatorial libraries, Chem. Eur. J., 1999, 5, 2455.
• Lehn, J.-M., Toward complex matter: Supramolecular chemistry and self-organization, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 2002, 99, 4763.
• Lehn, J.-M., From supramolecular chemistry towards constitutional dynamic chemistry and adaptive chemistry, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2007, 36, 151.     
• Lehn, J.-M., Chapter 1, inConstitutional Dynamic Chemistry, ed. M. Barboiu, Topics Curr. Chem, 2012, 322, 1-32.
• Lehn, J.-M., Perspectives in Chemistry – Steps towards Complex Matter,  Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2013, 52, 2836-2850. 
• Lehn, J.-M., Perspectives in Chemistry – Aspects of Adaptive Chemistry and Materials, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2015, 54, 3276-3289.