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Research Focus Our research integrates engineering design principles with protein biochemistry, microbiology and modern biotechnology to create microorganisms with new or improved protein machinery for solving problems in human health that cannot be solved using natural systems. In particular, while nature’s molecular machines possess highly desirable attributes such as specificity and high catalytic activity, it can be difficult (or impossible) to identify protein machines whose natural function is tailored for practical problems. To address this challenge, we employ protein engineering, the science of redesigning natural biomolecular scaffolds, to engineer new activities or non-natural characteristics into protein frameworks that comprise cellular machinery. Our long-term goal is to engineer protein machinery that plays a central role in folding and post-translational modification of complex, next generation immunotherapeutic proteins from the Immunoglobulin Supergene Family. These molecules are significant as they show great clinical promise in treating a range of human disorders including Alzheimer’s disease and human autoimmune disease. In addition to the applied nature of the research, an equally important goal is to understand how the structure and function of cellular machines affects the behavior of microorganisms in order to provide a basis from which a protein machine’s functionality can be enhanced or even reprogrammed. The two interrelated areas of our research are: 1) the functional analysis of existing protein machinery; and 2) the design and engineering of entirely new protein machinery.