Laura Gil Pineda
- BcGSA DEI Representative
- Research area(s): Amyloid and Intrinsically Disordered proteins
Education
Ph.D., Biochemistry, Virginia Tech, 2025 Expected
Future Professoriate Graduate Certificate, Virginia Tech, 2025 Expected
Graduate Certificate in University Teaching, Universidad Icesi. Cali, Colombia, 2020.
B.S., Chemistry with a focus on biochemistry, Universidad Icesi, 2019
B.S., Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Universidad Icesi, 2019
Experience
January 2021-present, Graduate Research Assistant, Biochemistry, Virginia Tech
January 2019-June 2019, Research Assistant, University of New Mexico
August 2022-December 2022 & August 2021-December 2021, Graduate
August 2021-December 2021, Teaching Assistant for BCHM 4115 General Biochemistry, Virginia Tech
August 2020-December 2020, Instructor of record for Laboratory of Physical Chemistry II, Universidad Icesi
Program Focus: I’m currently studying the electronic effects of phosphorylation on the secondary, tertiary and quaternary structure of amyloid and intrinsically disordered proteins. Phosphorylation is one of the most common post-translational modifications and can modulate protein transport, function, and stability. To study the effect of phosphorylation I will use different protein systems, some small like tetrapeptide GSXS and b-catenin17-48, and some larger like a-synuclein and eIF4E-4EBP2. This falls under the Lemkul Lab project that hopes to investigate the pathological aggregation of proteins associated with disease states such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Reviewed Journals
Tongtong Li, Laura I. Gil Pineda, Amy O. Stevens, Yi He* - Key factors regulating the inter-domain dynamics may contribute to the assembly of ASC, Biology, 12(6), 796, 2023 DOI: 10.3390/biology12060796
Laura I. Gil Pineda, Laurie N. Milko, Yi He* - Performance of CHARMM36m with modified water model in simulating intrinsically disordered proteins: A case study, Biophysics Reports, 2020, DOI:10.1007/s41048-020-00107-w
Tongtong Li, Amy O. Stevens, Laura I. Gil Pineda, Shenghan Song, Christabel A. Ameyaw Baah, Yi He* - Changes in structure and flexibility of p53 TAD2 upon binding to p300 Taz2, J. Theor. Comput. Chem., 2020, 2040007, DOI: 10.1142/S0219633620400076
Poster Presentations
Laura I. Gil Pineda, Justin A. Lemkul (2023) Using GSSS and b-catenin17-48 to study the effects of phosphoserine on polypetide conformational ensembles. Justice for Underrepresented Scholars Training in Biophysics (JUST-B) Biophysical Society Annual Meeting. San Diego, CA.
Laura I. Gil Pineda, Marcelo D. Polêto, Darcy S. Davidson, Justin A. Lemkul (2022) Going through changes: Effect of phosphoserine on secondary structure and dipole moments. Biophysical Society Annual Meeting. San Francisco, CA.
Laura I. Gil Pineda, Fabio González, Carlos A. Arango, Constain Salamanca (2018) Molecular dynamics: an approach to the understanding of drug delivery systems. 256th ACS National Meeting. Boston, MA
Laura I. Gil Pineda, Suhani Nagpal, Victor Muñoz (2018) Computational study of the mechanism of coupled folding of an intrinsically disordered protein: NCBD. 11th Research Dissemination Symposium at Universidad Icesi. Cali, Colombia.