Baek, Minkyung
Proteins play many critical roles by interacting with other proteins, nucleic acids, and organic molecules. The disruption or deregulation of their interactions often leads to disease. Understanding protein structures and interactions can facilitate a mechanistic understanding of their function and provide a tractable way of modulating interactions for disease treatment. Our group will develop artificial intelligence-based computational methods for 1) biomolecular modeling to reveal interactions between biomolecules in both molecular and cellular level, and 2) design of interaction modulators as potential biomolecular therapeutics. The outcomes will lead to a deeper understanding of structural mechanisms for biomolecular interactions and their functions, and provide an efficient way to design novel therapeutics targeting disease-related biomolecular interactions.
Education
- - 2013.03 – 2018.08 Ph.D. in Chemistry, Seoul National University
- - 2009.03 – 2013.02 B.S. in Chemistry, Seoul National University
Career
- - 2022.09 – 2026.08 Assistant Professor, Seoul National University
- - 2019.05 – 2022.07 Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Washington
- - 2018.09 – 2019.03 Postdoctoral researcher, Seoul National University
- S-H. Lee†, Y. Kim†, G. Kim, M. Choe, S-H. Roh, M. Baek*, Y-J. Seok*, CRP-dependent DNA anchoring and membrane sequestration define a dual mechanism for MtlR-mediated regulation, Nucleic Acids Research, 54(14), (2026). (*co-correspondence)
- Y. Kim, M. Baek*, TiDE-Ab: De Novo Epitope-Specific Antibody Design via Time-Dependent Guidance, Bioinformatics, 42 (supplement 2), (2026).
- M. Kshirsagar, A. Mellur, I.R. Humphreys, S. Sledzieski, Y. Xu, R. Dodhia, E. Horvitz, B. Berger, G.R. Bowman, J. L. Ferres, D. Baker, M. Baek*, Rapid and accurate prediction of protein homo-oligomer symmetry using Seq2Symm, Nature Communications, 16, 2017 (2025).
- I. R. Humphreys†, J. Zhang†, M. Baek†*, Y. Wang†, et al, Protein interactions in human pathogens revealed through deep learning, Nature Microbiology, 9, 2642-2652 (2024). (†co-first authors).
- M. Baek, R. McHugh, I. Anishchenko, H. Jiang, D. Baker, F. DiMaio*, Accurate prediction of protein- nucleic acid complexes using RoseTTAFoldNA, Nature Methods, 21, 117–121 (2024).