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TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Protein Stability and Unfolding: Experimental and Computational Methodologies
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Guest Editor

Faez Iqbal Khan

Faez Iqbal Khan

Department of Biosciences and Bioinformatics, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

<p>Dr. Faez Iqbal Khan is an assistant professor in the Department of Biosciences and Bioinformatics at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU), Suzhou, China. He holds a PhD in computational chemistry and bioinformatics from Durban University of Technology, South Africa, and a Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) from Advance HE. His research spans protein engineering, protein folding and unfolding, molecular dynamics simulations, drug design, and high-throughput virtual screening.</p><p><br></p><p>Dr. Khan has authored over 90 peer-reviewed publications, accumulating more than 2,900 citations and an h-index of 31. He was ranked among the top 2% of scientists globally in the Stanford University/Elsevier rankings (2022). He currently holds adjunct appointments at Taylor's University Malaysia and Datta Meghe Institute of Higher Education and Research, and serves as a member of multiple Suzhou-based key laboratories.</p>

Collection Overview

Protein stability and unfolding are central to understanding structure-function relationships, enzyme engineering, misfolding diseases, and drug discovery. This Topical Collection curates state-of-the-art experimental and computational methodologies that quantitatively probe protein stability landscapes and unfolding mechanisms under diverse perturbations, including chemical denaturants, temperature, pH, and ligand binding. The collection emphasizes integrative approaches combining biophysical experiments with molecular modeling, featuring chemical denaturation assays, thermal unfolding, circular dichroism, fluorescence spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, hydrogen-deuterium exchange, NMR, cryo-EM, molecular dynamics simulations, enhanced sampling methods, and stability prediction algorithms. A key objective is to standardize reproducible, visualized protocols that lower the barrier for researchers entering the field, with particular focus on mechanistic dissection of denaturant-induced unfolding, engineering thermostable proteins, and linking stability perturbations to biological function and disease.