{"id":18689,"date":"2025-08-17T12:45:47","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T16:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/molecular-and-structural-biochemistry\/people\/nmennist\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T13:35:57","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T17:35:57","slug":"nmennist","status":"publish","type":"person","link":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/molecular-and-structural-biochemistry\/people\/nmennist\/","title":{"rendered":"Nathan Ennist"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>Research Interests<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>My research focuses on the de novo design of proteins for high-efficiency photosynthesis. By integrating physics-based computational methods with machine learning, our group engineers novel light-responsive enzymes and electron-transfer proteins from the ground up. We use spectroscopy, biological redox chemistry, and structural biology to evaluate the architecture and function of proteins designed for light harvesting and charge separation. These designs are validated through functional testing in vitro and in vivo in photosynthetic bacteria and plants, with the goal of developing robust, artificial biological systems for sustainable solar energy conversion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":18696,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"group":[219,249],"person_tag":[],"class_list":["post-18689","person","type-person","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","group-faculty","group-structural-and-analytical-biochemistry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/molecular-and-structural-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person\/18689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/molecular-and-structural-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/molecular-and-structural-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/person"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/molecular-and-structural-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/molecular-and-structural-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person\/18689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19216,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/molecular-and-structural-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person\/18689\/revisions\/19216"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/molecular-and-structural-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/molecular-and-structural-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"group","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/molecular-and-structural-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/group?post=18689"},{"taxonomy":"person_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/molecular-and-structural-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person_tag?post=18689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}