Safia Aljedani, a Ph.D. candidate under the supervision of Professor Stefan Arold, defended her Ph.D. dissertation on December 6, 2018.
Her topic, "Molecular Basis for p85 Dimerization and Allosteric Ligand Recognition", was well received by the external reviewer Professor Pau Bernado (CNRS, France), and KAUST committee members Professor Stefan Arold, Associate Professor Samir Hamdan and Associate Professor Salim Al-Babili.
In her research, Safia combined biophysical and structural methods such as small angle X-ray scattering, X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance, microscale thermophoresis, and chemical crosslinking to investigate the contributions of all p85α domains to dimerization and ligand binding. She found that p85α dimerization and ligand recognition are mechanistically more complex and interconnected than previously thought. This finding allows her to suggest a molecular mechanism that links p85α dimerization and allosteric p110α activation through ligands.
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