PhD student Nayanika Das participated in the 18th International Congress of the Spanish Biophysical Society, held from June 24 to 27, 2025, at the Faculty of Chemistry of the Complutense University of Madrid. This event, organized by the Spanish Biophysical Society, brings together scientists from various disciplines and stages of their research careers to explore cutting-edge topics in the field of biophysics.
During the congress, Nayanika presented her results in poster format, entitled: “Exploring the Evolutionary Dynamics between GPX6 Orthologs and Comparing Their Catalytic Efficiency Using Empirical Valence Bond (EVB) Calculations.” Her work shows why the substitution of selenocysteine with cysteine in GPX6 significantly reduces catalytic efficiency, supporting the proposed mechanistic hypothesis, and it also extends the analysis to explore the energy landscape of cummulative mutations between Sec- and Cys- containing GPX6 proteins in nature. Thus, using a greedy algorithm, key mutations with lower activation barriers were identified that could stabilize the enzyme and offer an energetically favorable evolutionary path between homolog proteins.