Chemoperception: insights from computational techniques

Alejandro Giorgetti is Associate Professor of biochemistry at the University of Verona, Italy, since 2018, where he leads the Laboratory of Applied Bioinformatics. As a second affiliation, since 2015 he is the P.I. of the Structural Neuroinformatics group in the Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS) / Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM) (Computational Biomedicine (IAS-5/INM-9)), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany.

His principal activities regard protein structural bioinformatics and computational biophysics aimed at understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying the interaction of membrane chemo and neuro-receptors with their cognate ligands.

He presents the work carried out over past ten years, based on the use of computational techniques in order to characterise the interaction between receptors and molecules. Which techniques and tools have they developed and are applying? The focus is on receptors devoted to chemoperception, in particular olfactory and taste receptors (bitter sweet and umami taste preceptors) that belong to the largest family of G-protein couples receptors (GPCRs). Why is it important to try and understand how a molecule present in a food or beverage interacts with receptors?

Video of the seminar held during Macrowine virtual (June 23-30, 2021)

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