Published Paper - Amyloid-Beta Research
This is a research project I worked on starting in June 2020 and finished in October 2021. I am the first author of the paper which was published in the Biomolecules Journal and is titled Data Mining of Molecular Simulations Suggest Key Amino Acid Residues for Aggregation, Signaling and Drug Action.
This research involved analyzing a peptide called amyloid-beta. When amyloid-beta clumps together, it forms plaques and lines up along the brain causing Alzheimer's disease. Because it is the precursor to Alzheimer's this research wanted to learn more about what causes the aggregation. This research used molecular simulations of amyloid-beta structures to understand the torsion angles at each residue and how they could be related to disease severity. There are two torsion angles (phi and psi) and 42 residues. The residues correspond to different locations of amyloid-beta. I used machine learning techniques to help determine which residues were the most significant for the clumping phenomenon. The research concluded that the signaling region of amyloid-beta was the most significant in causing Alzheimer's and should be the next place evaluated for Alzheimer's curing drugs.
For this research, I worked with professors from George Mason University. This is the link to the research:
https://www.mdpi.com/2218-273X/11/10/1541