Muneer Yaqub Helps Students Apply for Graduate School

Muneer Yaqub, a UT Dallas student, shares tips on scholarships and graduate school applications online to help international students.

Muneer Yaqub Helps Students Apply for Graduate School

Muneer Yaqub, a UT Dallas student, shares tips on scholarships and graduate school applications online to help international students.

Texas professors self-censor for fear of retaliation, survey finds

At least a third of respondents at UT-Austin, UT-Dallas and Texas A&M said they’re not sure administrators at their universities protect free speech on campus.

Office of Emergency Management National Preparedness Month

UTD Satellite Workshop

Rational Design of the beta-Bulge Gate in a Green Fluorescent Protein Accelerates the Kinetics of Sulfate Sensing

Here, we report how the mutagenesis of the -bulge residues (D137 and W138) in mNeonGreen, a bright fluorescent protein, unlocks and tunes the anion preference at physiological pH for sulfate, resulting in the turn-off sensor SulfOFF-1. This unprecedented sensing arises from an enhancement in the kinetics of binding, largely driven by position 138. In line with these data, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations capture how the coordinated entry and gating of sulfate into the -barrel is eliminated upon mutagenesis to facilitate binding and fluorescence quenching. Given the significance of sulfate in metabolic processes, we are now poised to apply SulfOFF-1 in living cells. We anticipate that fundamental insights gained from MD simulations can be integrated with protein engineering to design and expand this unique anion sensing function in the GFP family.