Education & Training
- M.S. in Chemical Engineering from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey, 1983
- B.A. in Chemical Engineering from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey, 1980
Research Interest Summary
Research Categories
Research Interests
Our goal is to understand the physical basis and machinery of biological processes at the molecular-to-cellular level. A molecular level understanding requires structural knowledge, in the first place. However, knowledge of structure is not sufficient either. Structures provide a static description, while biomolecular systems are not static. They constantly move, adapt themselves to different conditions, and assume different forms depending on their interactions. The observed static structures simply represent one, most probable, conformation observed at the particular experimental conditions, among many, otherwise accessible. Our lab major focus is to bridge between structure and function, by modeling and establishing the dynamics of biomolecular systems, in addition to exploring their sequence and structure evolution properties. Important applications are drug design and discovery, development of effective pharmacological therapies, and models and methods for simulating complex microphysiogical behavior, with focus on neurodegenerative diseases and neurological disorders. Other topics of interest involve the mathematical modeling and simulations of cell responses to external effects including cell signaling and regulation of apoptotic, autophagy and biodegradation pathways.
Representative Publications
Bahar I (2014) Coupling between Neurotransmitter Translocation and Protonation State of a Titratable Residue during Na(+)-Coupled Transport Biophys J106: 2547-8 PMID: 24940770
Bakan A,* Dutta A,* Mao W, Liu Y, Chennubhotla C, Lezon TR, Bahar I (2014) Evol and ProDy for Bridging Protein Sequence Evolution and Structural Dynamics Bioinformatics PMID: 24849577
O'Reilly LP,* Long OS,* Cobanoglu MC,* Benson JA, Luke CJ, Miedel MT, Hale P, Perlmutter DH, Bahar I, Silverman GA, Pak SC (2014) A genome-wide RNAi screen identifies potential drug targets in a C. elegans model of α1-antitrypsin deficiency Hum Mol Genet PMID: 24838285
General IJ, Liu Y, Blackburn M, Mao W, Gierasch L, Bahar I (2014) ATPase subdomain IA is a mediator of interdomain allostery in Hsp70 molecular chaperones PLoS Comp Bio10: e1003624 PMID: 24831085
Cobanoglu MC, Liu C, Hu F, Oltvai ZN, Bahar I (2013) Predicting drug-target interactions using probabilistic matrix factorization J Chem Inf Model53: 3399-409 PMID: 24289468
Chu CT, Ji J, Dagda RK, Jiang JF, Tyurina YY, Kapralov AA, Tyurin VA, Yanamala N, Shrivastava IH, Mohammadyani D, Wang KZQ, Zhu J, Klein-Seetharaman J, Balasubramanian K, Amoscato AA, Borisenko G, Huang Z, Gusdon AM, Cheikhi A, Steer EK, Wang R, Baty C, Watkins S, Bahar I, Bayir H, Kagan VE (2013) Cardiolipin externalization to the outer mitochondrial membrane acts as an elimination signal for mitophagy in neuronal cells Nature Cell Biology15: 1197-1205 PMID: 24036476; PMC3806088
Gur M, Madura JD, Bahar I (2013) Global transitions of proteins explored by a multiscale hybrid methodology: Application to adenylate kinase Biophys J105: 1643-1652 PMID: 24094405; PMC3791301
Gur M, Zomot E, Bahar I (2013) Global motions exhibited by proteins in micro- to milliseconds simulations concur with anisotropic network model predictions J Chem Phys139: 121912. PMID: 24089724; PMC3739829
Cheng MH, Bahar I (2013) Coupled global and local changes direct substrate translocation by neurotransmitter-sodium symporter ortholog LeuT Biophys J105: 630-639. PMID: 23931311; PMC3736663
Zomot E, Bahar I (2013) Intracellular gating in an inward-facing state of aspartate transporter GltPh is regulated by the movements of the helical hairpin HP2 J Biol Chem288: 8231-8237. PMID: 23386619; PMC3605641