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Andrew Savinov

@biosavinov.bsky.social

262 followers 695 following 37 posts

Assistant Professor at UT Austin in the Department of Molecular Biosciences. Our lab discovers and designs protein fragments as universal regulators of protein interactions in health & disease. www.savinovlab.com

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Andrew Savinov @biosavinov.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Come join us in pushing the boundaries of this exciting new field! We are looking for curious and passionate scientists at all levels. We are an interdisciplinary lab interested in backgrounds from cell and molecular biology to biophysics, engineering, and computer science. (2/n)

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Andrew Savinov @biosavinov.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Thrilled to announce that the Savinov lab is now live at UT Austin @utaustin.bsky.social! Our lab employs massively parallel experimental and AI methods to discover and design protein fragments as universal regulators of protein interactions in health and disease. www.savinovlab.com (1/n)

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Andrew Savinov @biosavinov.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

We further demonstrated that the inhibitory fragment of FAK robustly titrates condensate formation – and is able to abrogate FAK condensate formation in living mammalian cells! We are excited about the implications for novel cancer therapeutics. (14/n)

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Andrew Savinov @biosavinov.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

We validated this novel driving interaction by deleting the kinase domain and showing loss of condensate formation. (13/n)

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Andrew Savinov @biosavinov.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

In the case of FAK, a cancer driver protein that forms condensates at focal adhesions, we discovered both condensate-inhibiting and -enhancing fragments. The inhibitory fragment uncovered a novel interaction between the FERM and kinase domains driving phase separation! (12/n)

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Andrew Savinov @biosavinov.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

For example, we discover several fragments of G3BP1 that strongly inhibit condensate formation. FragFold predicts that these fragments bind in a native-like mode mimicking NTF2L dimerization, which is essential for phase separation and stress granule formation. (10/n)

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Andrew Savinov @biosavinov.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

We therefore applied FragFold to predict how all possible fragments of diverse phase-separating proteins bind to their parental proteins, modulating condensate formation. We then selected a small set of AI-discovered protein fragments for experimental testing. (6/n)

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Andrew Savinov @biosavinov.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Given that biomolecular condensates are driven by multivalent interactions, we reasoned that fragments of condensate-forming proteins should provide a universal approach to control biomolecular condensates and study the molecular interactions driving phase separation. (5/n)

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Andrew Savinov @biosavinov.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Interested in genetically encodable inhibitors of your favorite biomolecular condensate? Excited to announce our latest work, w/ Jibin Sadasivan, Gene-Wei Li, & Lindsay Case, on protein fragments as generalizable regulators of phase separation. (1/n) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Andrew Savinov @biosavinov.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

We tested ~1800 designs experimentally in living cells alongside fragments tiling across DNA gyrase. About 20% inhibited bacterial growth, and 5.5% were specific to the designed binding mode, which we assayed by almost 1800 mutants breaking the peptide binding interfaces! (3/n)

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