Mechanical engineering professor Anna Tarakanova listens during the Women in STEM Frontiers in Research Expo 2020, which she co-organized. Photo provided.
Anna Tarakanova has long been interested in the workings of objects and bodies. His chosen specialty in the field of Mechanical Engineering — studying the structure, function, and mechanics of biological systems and materials, especially fibrous protein materials such as elastin and collagen — merges the two.
The assistant professor of mechanical engineering and her team are working to establish a high-fidelity modeling framework for both healthy and degenerate elastins to use as a tool to resolve various pathological stressors that affect the functioning of elastin. from a nanometer scale.
During aging and with chronic, often age-related diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and osteoarthritis, elastin can degenerate, causing a decrease in normal function. Elastin is an essential structural protein that gives the skin, heart, blood vessels and other elastic tissues of the body the quality of stretch they need to function.
“On a molecular scale, there are a number of physico-chemical modifications that occur that drive this mechanical degeneration over time,” says Tarakanova. “Because they are quite numerous and act in parallel, it is difficult to deconstruct which triggers the impact mechanics and to what extent. If we can understand the mechanism, we can think of new therapies to target aging and the diseases associated with aging. “
Tarakanova’s work has earned him a National Science Foundation (CAREER) 2022 Initial Career Development Award. He is one of the 11 young professors at UConn who this year received the coveted award, which recognizes the potential of the recipient as a role model in education and research.
The CAREER Awards include five years of funding to provide a foundation for a young teacher’s research program. In addition to advancing her research, Tarakanova plans to use funding to create activities and events to engage and support undergraduate and graduate students, especially those from underrepresented groups. The effort will include a restart of Women In STEM Frontiers in Research Expo which she co-organized with a partner in January 2020.
“For me, it was kind of a natural extension of what I wanted to do as a teacher, be a STEM woman and be a minority for most of my educational career,” says Tarakanova.
Elastin and collagen are not the only protein materials that attract attention. Early in the pandemic, Tarakanova and two of his graduate students began exploring the SARS-CoV-2-associated ear protein to find out how it moved when it interacted with the immune system. He is now working with Paulo Verardi, a pathologist at the UConn College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources, and UConn biochemist Simon White to develop new and potentially better ways to stabilize ear proteins for use. those in vaccines against COVID-19, especially in relation to emerging vaccines. new variants of the virus.
“Some of the methods we are using to study spike protein are related to the methods we have used and continue to use to look at elastin,” he says. “It is a different project, but it is generally included in this fusion of computer and computer models, physics, biomechanics and biochemistry to understand the dynamic behavior of the COVID spike protein, the protein found in a part of the crown “.