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Molecular Physiology & Biophysics

Stephanie Wankowicz

Assistant Professor, Molecular Physiology & Biophysics

The Wankowicz lab’s goal is to elucidate the role of entropy in substrate specificity and catalysis, aiming to provide a more comprehensive thermodynamic understanding of enzyme function. The influence of entropy is frequently underestimated because of the complexities in modeling multiple states and quantifying it. To achieve this, we develop computational algorithms to improve the modeling of conformational ensembles from X-ray crystallography and cryo-EM. We are parsing out how conformational and solvent entropy impacts binding specificity and catalysis using these improved models, biophysical measurements, and machine learning.