The Department of Chemistry and McNair Scholars / TRIO are pleased to host Dr. Denise Okafor, Assistant Professor at Penn State University who will be presenting a seminar this Wednesday at 3:30 p.m.

Steroid receptors regulate transcription in response to the binding of steroid hormones. Based on their molecular structure, these steroids can promote diverse transcriptional outcomes by the selective recruitment of cofactor proteins to the activation function 2 (AF-2) surface. A poorly understood aspect of this regulation is how ligands with diverse structures signal between the ligand binding pocket and AF-2 surface and selectively alter it to modulate cofactor binding. In this talk, Dr. Okafor will discuss an ancestral steroid receptor with contrasting transcriptional response to steroidal ligands. Using atomistic molecular dynamics simulation and analysis of residue-interaction networks, Dr. Okafor will show how ligands selectively modulate interactions in the binding pocket, creating effects that propagate to the AF-2 surface. These findings provide a rationale for how events in the ligand binding pocket may alter conformations at the AF-2 surface, facilitating selective cofactor recruitment.

Please email jim.bann@wichita.edu for the zoom link.