Our Research

Proteins are amazingly diverse molecules that are capable of performing complex chemical and biological functions. Such versatility presents tremendous opportunities for solving challenging human problems that range from medicine and agriculture to environmental protection and industrial chemistry. Our ability to design proteins with tailor-made functions has been impeded by our limited understanding of these complex molecules. The Romero Lab studies the design principles of proteins and how they can be applied to engineer new molecular functions. We believe technological advances in both computational and experimental methods will drive our understanding of the relationships between protein sequence, structure, and function. Therefore, a large part of our work focuses on developing new methods to probe these relationships on an unprecedented scale. These methods leverage advances in DNA sequencing/synthesis, microfluidics, molecular modeling, machine learning, and optimization.