Donald, Bruce RandallHolt, Graham Thomas2022-09-212022https://hdl.handle.net/10161/25747<p> Proteins are incredibly varied in their biological function, and are therefore attractive targets for scientists and engineers to design new and improved functions. These functions are defined by a protein structure, which can be viewed as a probability distribution over a large conformation space. Many successful protein design methods construct and evaluate models of protein structure and physics in silico to design proteins. We apply the concept of protein structure as a probability distribution to design new protein design algorithms, study mechanisms of protein binding and antibiotic resistance, and design improved broadly-neutralizing antibodies This research highlights the utility of the distribution view of protein structure, and suggests future research in this direction.</p>Computational chemistryDissertation