Proteins do almost all of the work in your body: replicating DNA, moving molecules back and forth, communicating between cells, and catalyzing reactions. Individual proteins perform multiple functions by changing shape. Directly measuring changes in protein shape and function has never been possible before. Biodesy is developing the first technology to directly measure both protein structure and function in real time.
How proteins work is determined by the primary amino acid sequence and the unique three-dimensional shape, or native conformation, into which the amino acids are folded. In the cell, proteins are not static but undergo dynamic structural rearrangements, known as conformational changes, when they interact with other biomolecules. At the molecular level, protein function occurs as a result of these conformational changes. Measuring changes in protein structure in real time will provide new insight about how proteins function and lead to improvements in how we treat disease.
Current measurements of structure (e.g., x-ray, NMR) are expensive and difficult. Current measurements of function (e.g., binding, activity) are indirect and imprecise. Biodesy is developing products to enable rapid, inexpensive, real-time measurement of both structure and function in a single universal assay. Applications include drug discovery, structural biology, and clinical biomarkers.