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Brannigan Lab

@branniganlab.bsky.social
54 followers 52 following 55 posts

Molecular simulation of proteins, membranes, and small molecules, in the Center for Computational and Integrative Biology at Rutgers-Camden. PI: Grace Brannigan branniganlab.org

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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
A new preprint is out by our PhD student, Lindsey Riggs! We reveal a hidden interaction network in an IDP that connects a mutation site to distant regions through transient tertiary interactions. Beneath the disorder lies an underlying network! Read here: chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10....
chemrxiv.org
A tertiary network couples hydrophobic substitutions to terminal contacts in an IDP | ChemRxiv
Conformational ensembles of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are sensitive to changes in amino acid sequence. Even chemically conservative substitutions can alter global properties and interac...
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
🏆 Results from the CCIB Research Showcase! Jesse Sandberg and Jahmal Ennis tied for 2nd in the Senior PhD division, Nivedha took 1st and Johannah Stevenson 3rd in the MS division, and Lindsey Riggs was a finalist in the Intermediate PhD division. Very proud of this crew 🎉
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
🏅 Congratulations to the Brannigan Lab PhD students on the Graduate School Student Leadership Award — and to Connor Pitman on Distinguished Alumni! They were nominated as a group for building workshops, shaping C4L training, and supporting the CCIB grad community. 🎉
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
🏮 Lab and lanterns! We finally got to celebrate Jahmal Ennis and his Chateaubriand Fellowship the right way — glowing sculptures, carnival games, and one very proud lab. Félicitations, Jahmal ! 🎉🇫🇷
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
We are so proud of Jahmal Ennis for receiving the Chateaubriand Fellowship! 🇫🇷🎉 He will spend 5 months in France working with Dr. Paulo Cesar Telles de Souza on computational modeling of gold nanoparticles. Congratulations, Jahmal! 🥳 Read about it here: ccib.camden.rutgers.edu/ccib-ph-d-st...
ccib.camden.rutgers.edu
CCIB Ph.D. Student Jahmal Ennis Awarded Chateaubriand Fellowship - Center for Computational and Integrative Biology
CCIB Ph.D. student Jahmal Ennis has been awarded the prestigious Chateaubriand Fellowship, a competitive award that supports research collaborations between the United States and France. Jahmal is als...
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
The Brannigan Lab held our annual cocktail contest, and this year’s theme was Animal-Inspired Cocktails! Drinks were inspired by animals ranging from fish and tigers to moles and flies! Congratulations to Jesse, whose fly-inspired passion fruit cocktail took the top prize!🥂🥳🥇
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Thinking about simulating gold nanoparticles? Read our latest preprint authored by our PhD student, Jahmal Ennis, here! 😄 chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10....
chemrxiv.org
Do the Core Parameters Matter? Coarse-grained Simulations of Neutral Nanoparticles | ChemRxiv
The aggregation of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) influences their optical properties, including localized surface plasmon resonance, through plasmonic coupling between adjacent particles. For hydrophobic AuNPs embedded in lipid membranes, however, the ...
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Last week, we celebrated the graduation of two students from the lab, and we couldn’t be prouder! 🎉Congratulations Ryan and Dr. Pitman!!! We know you are both going to accomplish amazing things, and we can’t wait to see what’s next for you both!! 👏🎓😄
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
We are incredibly proud of you, Connor, and we will miss you very much! Best of luck in your future endeavors ❤️🥹👏🎓🥳
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
He also spent much of his PhD working on webtool development for the blobulator (blobulator.branniganlab.org) - which segments protein sequences by contiguous hydrophobicity. Check it out!
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
His projects focused on both pairs of hydrophobic residues and modules composed of hydrophobic residues, and their unique roles in protein evolution.
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
A huge congratulations to Dr. Pitman, who successfully defended his PhD dissertation, "Elucidating the role of non-aliphatic residues and hydrophobic modularity in proteins"! 🎉🎓😁
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Reposted by Brannigan Lab
CCIB @ccib-rutgers.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Rutgers–Camden NSF NRT team attended the NRT Conference at Colorado School of Mines! 🌟 Trainees Cleo Falvey, Jahmal Ennis, Lindsey Riggs, Ezry Santiago-McRae, Sarah Johnson, & Dr. Grace Brannigan shared research & connected with NSF peers. #NSF #NRT #STEM #AI #RutgersCamden
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Great job, everyone! Until next time 😁🥳
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Regina presented on using DNA to attach gold nanoparticles to produce light-sensitive nanotechnology!
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Jahmal presented on his latest developments for a Martini gold model!
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Jesse presented on how the Density-Threshold Affinity (DTA) method measures the binding affinity of lipids to membrane proteins!
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Ezry presented on how SAFEP can be used to calculate the absolute binding affinity of a lipid to a membrane protein!
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Connor presented a poster that discussed our blobulation algorithm! Feel free to check it out 😄 www.blobulator.branniganlab.org
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
In addition to two great talks by our lab at the BPS conference, our PhD students showed off their wonderful posters! Thank you, @ccib-rutgers.bsky.social, for giving us the opportunity to present our research!🧵
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Great job, everyone! Until next time 😁🥳
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Regina presented on using DNA to attach gold nanoparticles to produce light-sensitive nanotechnology!
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Jahmal presented on his latest developments for a Martini gold model 😄!
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Jesse presented on how the Density-Threshold Affinity (DTA) method measures the binding affinity of lipids to membrane proteins!
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Ezry presented on how SAFEP can be used to calculate the absolute binding affinity of a lipid to a membrane protein!
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Connor presented a poster that discussed our blobulation algorithm! Feel free to check it out 😁: www.blobulator.branniganlab.org
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
At the BPS conference, @gracebrannigan.bsky.social also gave an amazing talk at the Membrane Structure and Function Symposium! 👏😄 Well done!
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Our PhD student, Lindsey Riggs, gave her first talk at BPS on "Clustering the ensemble of an IDP by contiguous regions of hydrophobicity reveals distinguishable conformational states" Great job, Lindsey! 🎉😁
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
• Interactive web interface links known mutations with biophysical context: www.blobulator.branniganlab.org • CLI for batch analysis • VMD plugin for structure overlay For more information, read the paper here: doi.org/10.1021/acs....
doi.org
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
Not all mutations change a protein’s predicted structure, but they can still reorganize its sequence! We introduce the blobulator toolkit for exploring hydrophobic organization 🧵:
blobulator.branniganlab.org
Blobulator
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
The 7D motion theater and human crane were definitely highlights😆we also found some unique puppets at a thrift store and ended the trip with a beautiful hike! Until next time, Poconos! ⛰️
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
We had tons of fun playing Dutch Blitz and Mysterium👻! We even got a few games of pool in🎱😄
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
We recently took a trip to the Poconos to celebrate our lab’s many recent accomplishments, including Regina and Lindsey passing their qualifying exams! Congratulations to you both 🎉
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
Our PhD student Lindsey Riggs presented a poster about the Blobulator toolkit at the MidAtlantic Bioinformatics Conference last week! Well done👏🏻! Check out the Blobulator web tool here 😁: blobulator.branniganlab.org
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
⚠️Do you run coarse-grained membrane simulations with restraints on the absolute positions of any molecules? We found a common setting combination that causes metastable membrane distortions! Read our paper here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
SARS-CoV E protein couples asymmetric leaflet thickness and curvature deformations
The Envelope protein (E protein) of SARS-CoVs 1 and 2 has been implicated in the viral budding process and maintaining the spherical shape of the viru…
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
Thank you to everyone who participated, and congratulations again to our winners🎉 !! Let us know your favorite image/movie 😁 Until next time!
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
We also had some really unique media from Regina Salzer, Ezry Santiago-McRae, and another image from Jesse Sandberg!
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
2nd place 🥈: Ryan Lamb for "Under the Surface" youtu.be/4AAqFJvUxbU?...
youtu.be
Best General Scientific Media - 2nd place - Brannigan Lab VMD Contest 2025
YouTube video by Brannigan Lab
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
Last but not least, this year we decided to introduce a "Scientific media category" which allows participants to explore various editing/rendering tools. Please congratulate our winners: 1st place 🥇: Jesse Sandberg for "A postcard from Wyoming"
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
3rd place 🥉: Jesse Sandberg for "Sugar and Fat for the brain" youtu.be/dr8YujmwWcI?...
youtu.be
Best Movie - 3rd place - Brannigan Lab VMD Contest 2025
YouTube video by Brannigan Lab
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
2nd place 🥈: Connor Pitman for "Looking Glass" youtu.be/dT-x54ZXd-s?...
youtu.be
Best Movie - 2nd place - Brannigan Lab VMD Contest 2025
YouTube video by Brannigan Lab
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
Moving on to the winners for Best #VMD Movie of 2025🎉: 1st place 🥇: Jesse Sandberg for "Can you find the binding lipid?" youtu.be/9yo2ePhhUX8?...
youtu.be
Best Movie - 1st place - Brannigan Lab VMD Contest 2025
YouTube video by Brannigan Lab
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
We also had fantastic image entries from Connor Pitman, Lindsey Riggs, Ryan Lamb, and a second image from Jesse Sandberg!
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
And of course, Best entry by a beginner goes to Asim Dave for "Structure in sync" 🥇
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
3rd place 🥉: Jesse Sandberg for "Ghostly gathering"
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
2nd place 🥈: Jahmal Ennis for "Positive Infinity"
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
Without further ado, let’s congratulate our winners for Best #VMD Image of 2025🎉: 1st place 🥇: Ezry Santiago-McRae for "In a Bind"
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
First, we are truly appreciative of our panel of judges! Thank you to Colin Kinz-Thompson, Ilya Levantol, Ed Lyman, @susyk.bsky.social, @sykhalid.bsky.social, Alex Sodt, @markusdeserno.bsky.social, Emad Tajkhorshid, @jerome-henin.bsky.social, and Matthew Hansen! We couldn’t have done it without you!
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
🥁🥁We received some really outstanding entries this year for our Fourth Annual #VMD Contest! See the thread for all of the entries!🥁🥁
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Brannigan Lab @branniganlab.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
Congratulations, Ezry, for publishing a preprint, “Absolute Binding Affinity of a Phospholipid for a Membrane Protein: Alchemical Free Energy Calculations at Atomistic Resolution” at @chemrxiv.org. Give it a read😁! chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr...
chemrxiv.org
Absolute Binding Affinity of a Phospholipid for a Membrane Protein: Alchemical Free Energy Calculations at Atomistic Resolution
Specific lipid binding is a likely mechanism by which phospholipids may modulate the conformational ensembles of membrane proteins. An absolute binding affinity is the natural quantitative descriptor ...
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