Valerie Daggett

Valerie Daggett is a a professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, United States. Her laboratory focuses on work in molecular dynamics simulations of proteins and other biomolecules. In 2005, the Daggett laboratory was awarded a supercomputing grant by the U.S. Department of Energy for a "dynameomics" project aimed at producing representatively sampled molecular dynamics trajectories for all unique protein folds as identified by a consensus of systematic fold classification systems SCOP, CATH, and DALI. The project hopes to use dynamics information, including the identification of especially conformationally flexible regions of proteins, to improve algorithms for protein structure prediction, especially homology modeling methods. Identifying data clusters of transition states, partially denatured states, and other intermediate states shared by multiple related folds is believed to allow development of broadly related classes of "metafolds" whose relationships would not be obvious from examination of the folded state alone. The DOE grant was renewed for almost two million processor-hours in 2006.