Willow Coyote-Maestas, PhD, MS

Assistant Professor
Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences7
Coyote-Maestas
willow.coyote-maestas@ucsf.edu8
1700 4th Street, Rm 403E
UCSF Box 2240
San Francisco, CA 94158
United States

Links

UCSF Profiles9 Coyote-Maestas Lab10

Affiliations

Education programs

Biophysics Graduate Program (BP)11
Chemistry and Chemical Biology Graduate Program (CCB)12
Pharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmacogenomics Graduate Program (PSPG)13
UCSF Tetrad Graduate Program14

UCSF centers, institutes, and research programs

Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI)15

Departmental research area

pharmacogenomics and genomics16
computational biology and systems pharmacology17

Professional background

Degrees

PhD, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 2021
MS, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, University of Minnesota, 2019
BS, Chemistry, Evergreen State College, 2014
BA, Environmental Studies, Evergreen State College, 2014

Research keywords

  • DNA Transposable Elements
  • Molecular Dynamics Simulation
  • Recombination, Genetic
  • biophysics
  • Protein Domains
  • Potassium Channels
  • Organic Cation Transporter 1
  • Mutagenesis, Insertional
  • Protein engineering
  • Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-met
  • Protein Conformation
  • Allosteric Site
  • Bacteriophages
  • Potassium Channels, Inwardly Rectifying
  • Mutation, Missense
1. Investigator, Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, 2023-2028
2. Hanna Gray Fellow, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 2021-2027
3. Fellow, Quantitative Biology Institute, 2021-2023
4. Milne-Brandenbrug Research Award, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 2020
5. Ross A. Gortner Research Award, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 2019
6. Gilliam Fellow, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 2018-2021
7. Graduate Research Fellowship, National Science Foundation, 2017-2018
8. All Nations Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation in STEM, National Science Foundation, 2013-2014

Publications

Estevam GO, Linossi E, Rao J, Macdonald CB, Ravikumar A, Chrispens KM, Capra JA, Coyote-Maestas W, Pimentel H, Collisson EA, Jura N, Fraser JS. Mapping kinase domain resistance mechanisms for the MET receptor tyrosine kinase via deep mutational scanning. Elife. 2025 Feb 17; 13.
Howard MK, Hoppe N, Huang XP, Mitrovic D, Billesbølle CB, Macdonald CB, Mehrotra E, Rockefeller Grimes P, Trinidad DD, Delemotte L, English JG, Coyote-Maestas W, Manglik A. Molecular basis of proton sensing by G protein-coupled receptors. Cell. 2025 Feb 06; 188(3):671-687.e20.
Dawood M, Fayer S, Pendyala S, Post M, Kalra D, Patterson K, Venner E, Muffley LA, Fowler DM, Rubin AF, Posey JE, Plon SE, Lupski JR, Gibbs RA, Starita LM, Robles-Espinoza CD, Coyote-Maestas W, Gallego Romero I. Using multiplexed functional data to reduce variant classification inequities in underrepresented populations. Genome Med. 2024 Dec 03; 16(1):143.
Naghipourfar M, Chen S, Howard MK, Macdonald CB, Saberi A, Hagen T, Mofrad MRK, Coyote-Maestas W, Goodarzi H. A Suite of Foundation Models Captures the Contextual Interplay Between Codons. bioRxiv. 2024 Oct 13.
Estevam GO, Linossi EM, Macdonald CB, Espinoza CA, Michaud JM, Coyote-Maestas W, Collisson EA, Jura N, Fraser JS. Conserved regulatory motifs in the juxtamembrane domain and kinase N-lobe revealed through deep mutational scanning of the MET receptor tyrosine kinase domain. Elife. 2024 Sep 13; 12.
Trinidad DD, Macdonald CB, Rosenberg OS, Fraser JS, Coyote-Maestas W. Deep mutational scanning of EccD3 reveals the molecular basis of its essentiality in the mycobacterium ESX secretion system. bioRxiv. 2024 Aug 24.
Rao J, Xin R, Macdonald C, Howard MK, Estevam GO, Yee SW, Wang M, Fraser JS, Coyote-Maestas W, Pimentel H. Rosace: a robust deep mutational scanning analysis framework employing position and mean-variance shrinkage. Genome Biol. 2024 05 24; 25(1):138.
Yee SW, Macdonald CB, Mitrovic D, Zhou X, Koleske ML, Yang J, Buitrago Silva D, Rockefeller Grimes P, Trinidad DD, More SS, Kachuri L, Witte JS, Delemotte L, Giacomini KM, Coyote-Maestas W. The full spectrum of SLC22 OCT1 mutations illuminates the bridge between drug transporter biophysics and pharmacogenomics. Mol Cell. 2024 May 16; 84(10):1932-1947.e10.
Polacco BJ, Lobingier BT, Blythe EE, Abreu N, Khare P, Howard MK, Gonzalez-Hernandez AJ, Xu J, Li Q, Novy B, Naing ZZC, Shoichet BK, Coyote-Maestas W, Levitz J, Krogan NJ, Von Zastrow M, Hüttenhain R. Profiling the proximal proteome of the activated μ-opioid receptor. Nat Chem Biol. 2024 Sep; 20(9):1133-1143.
Macdonald CB, Nedrud D, Grimes PR, Trinidad D, Fraser JS, Coyote-Maestas W. DIMPLE: deep insertion, deletion, and missense mutation libraries for exploring protein variation in evolution, disease, and biology. Genome Biol. 2023 02 24; 24(1):36.
Coyote-Maestas W, Nedrud D, He Y, Schmidt D. Determinants of trafficking, conduction, and disease within a K+ channel revealed through multiparametric deep mutational scanning. Elife. 2022 05 31; 11.
Coyote-Maestas W, Nedrud D, Suma A, He Y, Matreyek KA, Fowler DM, Carnevale V, Myers CL, Schmidt D. Probing ion channel functional architecture and domain recombination compatibility by massively parallel domain insertion profiling. Nat Commun. 2021 12 08; 12(1):7114.
Coyote-Maestas W, Fraser JS. ORACLE reveals a bright future to fight bacteria. Elife. 2021 04 15; 10.
Nedrud D, Coyote-Maestas W, Schmidt D. A large-scale survey of pairwise epistasis reveals a mechanism for evolutionary expansion and specialization of PDZ domains. Proteins. 2021 Feb 23.
Coyote-Maestas W, Nedrud D, Okorafor S, He Y, Schmidt D. Targeted insertional mutagenesis libraries for deep domain insertion profiling. Nucleic Acids Res. 2020 01 24; 48(2):e11.
Coyote-Maestas W, Nedrud D, Okorafor S, He Y, Schmidt D. Targeted insertional mutagenesis libraries for deep domain insertion profiling. Nucleic Acids Res. 2020 Jan 24; 48(2):1010.
Coyote-Maestas W, He Y, Myers CL, Schmidt D. Domain insertion permissibility-guided engineering of allostery in ion channels. Nat Commun. 2019 01 17; 10(1):290.
Heal KR, Qin W, Ribalet F, Bertagnolli AD, Coyote-Maestas W, Hmelo LR, Moffett JW, Devol AH, Armbrust EV, Stahl DA, Ingalls AE. Two distinct pools of B12 analogs reveal community interdependencies in the ocean. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017 01 10; 114(2):364-369.