Faculty

Wonpil Im
Ph.D., Weill Medical College of Cornell University, 2002
Assistant Professor
2007 Alfred P. Sloan Fellow
200E MRB
(785) 864-1993; email:
Website: http://im.bioinformatics.ku.edu

The research programs in our group focus on the applications of theoretical/computational methods to chemical and physical problems in biology and material science.

Specific research interests and projects are

• developments of efficient and reliable tools for membrane protein modeling and studies of insertion, folding, and assembly of membrane proteins/peptides
• NMR & X-ray structure refinement of proteins and protein-DNA complexes using implicit solvent models
• ion channel activities such as ion permeation, selectivity, and gating at molecular level
• membrane fusion with simplified lipid molecules
• theoretical/methodological developments with particular emphasis on implicit solvent models

In addition, we are involved in developing the biomolecular simulation program CHARMM.

Representative Publications

• J. Lee and W. Im (2008)
  ITransmembrane Helix Tilting: Insights from Calculating the Potential of Mean Force. Phys. Rev. Lett. 100:018103 J. Comput. Chem. 28:669-680.
• J. Lee and W. Im (2007)
  Implementation and Application of Helix-Helix Distance and Crossing Angle Restraint Potentials. Phys. Rev. Lett. 100:018103.
• W. Im, J. Chen, and C.L. Brooks III (2006)
  Peptide and Protein Folding and Conformational Equilibria: Theoretical Treatment of Electrostatics and Hydrogen Bonding with Implicit Solvent Models. Adv. Protein Chem. 72:173-198.
• W. Im and C.L. Brooks III (2005)
  Interfacial Folding and Membrane Insertion of Synthetic Peptides Studied by Molecular Dynamics Simulations. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 102:6771-6776 .
• W. Im and C.L. Brooks III (2004)
  De Novo Folding of Membrane Proteins: An Exploration of the Structure and NMR Properties of the fd Coat Protein. J. Mol. Biol. 337:513-519 .
• W. Im, M. Feig, and C.L. Brooks III (2003)
  An Implicit Membrane Generalized Born Theory for the Study of Structure, Stability, and Interactions of Membrane Proteins. Biophys. J. 85:2900-2918 .
• W. Im and B. Roux (2002)
  Ion Permeation and Selectivity of OmpF Porin: A Theoretical Study Based on Molecular Dynamics, Brownian Dynamics, and Continuum Electrodiffusion Theory. J. Mol. Biol. 322:851-869.
• W. Im, S. Berneche, and B. Roux (2001)
  Generalized Solvent Boundary Potentials for Computer Simulations. J. Chem. Phys. 114:2924-2937 .
• W. Im, S. Seefeld and B. Roux (2000)
  Grand Canonical Monte Carlo - Brownian Dynamics Algorithm for Simulating Ion Channels. Biophys. J. 79:788-801.
• M. Nina, W. Im, and B. Roux (1999)
  Optimized Atomic Radii for Protein Continuum Electrostatics Solvation Forces. Biophys. Chem. 78:89-96 .
• W. Im, D. Beglov, and B. Roux (1998)
  Continuum Solvation Model: Computation of Electrostatic Forces from Numerical Solutions to the Poisson-Boltzmann Equation. Comput. Phys. Comm. 111:59-75.
• W. Im and Y. Won (1994)
  Molecular Dynamics Simulation on Thermodynamic and Structural Properties of Liquid Hydrocarbons : Normal Alkanes. bull. Korean Chem. Soc. 15:852-856 .