Gilbert Loiseau, an IPiB graduate student, will be defending his Ph.D. research on August 29, 2024. His research in the Senes Lab investigated the ways that transmembrane protein folding and association are impacted by atomic forces.
When atoms come into close contact, they experience an attraction to each other. This attraction, called van der Waals packing, has been widely studied in large complexes of membrane proteins. Loiseau was interested in studying the effect of van der Waals forces on small systems of membrane proteins.
“Membrane proteins can be difficult to study because there are so many factors impacting the folding process,” explains Loiseau. “Understanding the strength and impacts of different atomic forces helps us to piece together how a protein folds. From there, we can better understand what goes wrong when proteins misfold in ways that lead to diseases, or potentially use membrane proteins as targets for drugs to treat diseases.”
Using a technique developed in the Senes Lab, Loiseau induced bacteria to produce small systems of membrane proteins and green fluorescent protein (GFP), which causes cells to appear green. The magnitude of the force attracting the designed proteins to each other is correlated with the intensity of GFP. Loiseau also analyzed thousands of proteins using computer modeling to assess the strength of their attraction due to van der Waals packing.
Loiseau confirmed that van der Waals forces contribute to the attraction between proteins. However, it is unlikely to be a primary driving force for protein attraction. Future studies, he says, may want to explore the additive contribution of van der Waals forces in the presence of other forces.
“I was really able to develop and put to use so many skills in this research,” reflects Loiseau. “That’s an important part of the journey of scientific discovery. And, there’s real value in following a path that you find interesting. I’m grateful to my advisor, who helped me to find value in learning and understanding what I was seeing. He encouraged me to keep exploring and stay resilient during the entire grad school journey.”
Loiseau also found camaraderie and developed research skills through communities in SciMed Graduate Research Scholars, the Chemistry-Biology Interface (CBI) Training Program, and IPiB’s former DEI committee.
After graduate school, Loiseau is taking time to consider his next steps. “I’m interested in industry, in academia, but I really want to give myself a chance to see what kind of career fits best for me,” he says.
Included in Loiseau’s dissertation is a chapter he wrote to explain his research to the public. For Loiseau, the chapter was an opportunity to convey his thoughts, struggles, successes, and experiences as a graduate student. Presented as letters written between his acceptance into the IPiB program and his final research studies, Loiseau shares openly about his mental health, his experiences as a first-generation Haitian-Filipino American graduate student, and his evolving definition of success.
To learn more about Loiseau’s research, attend his Ph.D. defense, “Studying the impact of side chain packing on transmembrane helix association using computational design” on Thursday, August 29 at 12:00 p.m. CT in Room 1211 of Hector F. DeLuca Biochemical Sciences Building.