Our goal is to elucidate the mechanistic principles of biological energy conversion. To this end, we develop integrative biophysical methods that allow us to unravel how the catalytic power of enzymes arises from their structure, conformational dynamics, and biological surroundings.

The Kaila Lab, lead by Prof. Ville R. I. Kaila, is focused on understanding mechanistic principles of enzyme function and biological energy conversion, with an emphasis of how membrane-bound proteins transduce energy to drive central processes in our cells. These reactions are of key importance for understanding the molecular basis of cellular function, and have profound implications also for biomedicine and sustainable energy technology. To address these challenging questions, we develop integrative biophysical approaches that combine powerful multiscale simulations and data-driven approaches with biochemical and structural experiments. Our multidisciplinary approach allows us to probe the energetics, dynamics, and functional principles on a broad range of timescales and spatial resolutions, and to rationally test mechanistic hypotheses in both natural and synthetic model systems. We are affiliated with Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at Stockholm University.

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Our research is supported by the European Research Council (ERC), the Knut and Alice Wallenberg (KAW) foundation, the Swedish Research Foundation (VR), Göran Gustafsson Foundation, and Cancerfonden. Follow us on X or BlueSky or Instagram.

Recent selected papers:
Kim H et al. (2023). JACS 145: 17075-17086. Saura P et al. (2022). PNAS 119(38): e2207761119; Kaila et al. (2021) Nature Rev. Microbiol. 19: 319-330; Allgöwer F et al. (2022) JACS 144: 7171-7180; Röpke et al. (2020) JACS 142:21758-21766; Bridges et al. (2020) Nature Comms 5261, 11, 1–11: Schuller et al. (2020) Nature Comms 11, 494: 1-7; Jussupow et al. (2019) Science Adv. 5, eaav1850; Saura et al. (2019) JACS 41: 5710-5719. Warnau et al. (2018) PNAS 115: E8413-E8420.; Mader et al. (2018) Nature Comm 9, 1168:1-8.; Supekar et al. (2018) Chem Science 9:6703-6710.; Gamiz-Hernandez et al. (2017) JACS 139:16282-16288; Suomivuori et al. (2017)  PNAS 114:7043-7048; Di Luca et al. (2017) PNAS 114:E6314-E6321;