The Rainey Lab
What we do
We are a multidisciplinary group focused on protein engineering, biophysics, and structural biology.
Spider silks are a major target of study and application in our lab, with a broad repertoire of silk proteins now engineered, recombinantly produced in bacteria, and processed into functional fibres, films, sponges, gels, or nanoparticles by us.
Ligand-receptor interactions are the focus of a long-term project targeted at understanding distinctions in properties and behaviour of the variety of ligands - the apelin and ELABELA (or apela) peptide families - that all activate the same cell surface G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) - the apelin receptor (APJ or APLNR).
We are frequently collaborate with academic and industrial partners both locally in Halifax and well beyond.
Our studies are underpinned by NMR spectroscopy, optical spectroscopy (CD, FTIR, fluorescence, Raman), and materials characterization techniques (AFM, EM, optical microscopy, tensile testing), alongside correlative application of computational biophysics methods.
