Research
Proteins are the robots of the cell, performing various tasks to maintain cellular processes. At some time or another, proteins will specifically recognize a substrate, such as nucleic acid, carbohydrate, or another protein to initiate a biological event. For example, a transcription factor will bind to a specific DNA sequence to begin transcription, or a protease will recognize a particular amino acid or set of amino acids on a protein before cleaving or degrading the protein. Using x-ray crystallographic and biophysical methods, our laboratory studies protein structure and function to understand how proteins interact with substrates to control cellular processes.
The laboratory studies the mechanism of transcription in Trypanosomes. Trypanosomes are unicellular parasitic protozoa that cause a variety of diseases in humans and domestic cattle primarily in the tropical regions of the world. They display remarkable evolutionary divergence from other eukaryotes and metazoans in many well-studied molecular pathways. Although transcription in Trypanosomes is not well understood, it is already clear that differences in this pathway between Trypanosomes and humans could provide drug targets. To understand how transcription factors assemble to initiate transcription in these organisms and to provide a molecular foundation for drug design, our laboratory is working in collaboration with Dr. Vivian Bellofatto of the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, New Jersey Medical School, to solve crystal structures of Trypanosome transcription factors and their complexes with DNA.