Graduate students entering the Molecular Biology Program
will have the opportunity to train in a specialty track in
"Biomolecular Structure". This track provides
additional course work in advanced protein chemistry and
structural analysis of biomolecules and the opportunity to
conduct thesis research in laboratories that have expertise in
the application of NMR spectroscopy, X-Ray
crystallography, mass spectrometry, computational biochemistry
and biophysical biochemistry to problems of structure/function
of biomolecules.
Faculty Research Interests (* indicates those who are
also Mol Biol faculty)
David Bain
(Pharmacy) - Physical chemistry of protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions.
Thermodynamic, structural, and molecular biological studies of progesterone
receptors and transcriptional coregulators.
Brad Bendiak
(Cellular & Structural Biology) - Elucidation of new oligosaccharide
structures of glycoproteins using NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry.
Thomas Blumenthal (MCDB, Boulder) – biochemistry; enzymology.
John Cambier
(Chair, Integrated Immunology) - Transduction and integration of regulatory
signals in lymphoid cells.
Uwe Christians
(Anesthesiology) - pharmacology; toxicology; mass spectrometry and proteomics; computational biology.
*Mair Churchill
(Pharmacology) - Mechanisms of gene regulation. Structural and functional studies of protein-DNA and
multi-protein complexes involved in eukaryotic gene expression and bacterial
pathogenesis using a variety of tools including X-ray Crystallography.
Mark Duncan
(Pharmaceutical Sciences) - Studies of (differential) protein expression in
lung cancer; oxidative damage in cystic fibrosis, neurodegenerative diseases,
and rheumatoid arthritis; changes in protein expression in heart disease. Mass spectrometry.
Elan Eisenmesser (Biochemistry) – Viral protein/host protein interactions and enzyme motions.
Frank Frerman
(Pediatrics) - Research involves several flavoproteins that function in the
mitochondrial oxidation of lysine. These are glutaryl-CoA dehydrogenase, electron transfer flavoprotein,
and electron transfer flavoprotein-ubiquinone oxidoreductase. Investigations focus on structure-function
relationships that bear o electron transfer mechanisms and on mutations in the
proteins that cause severe metabolic disease.
*Robert L. Garcea
(Pediatric Oncology) - Study of the structure of polyoma (e.g. SV40) and
papillomaviruses; cellular control mechanisms regulating macromolecular
assembly.
Kirk Hansen (Pediatrics) – mass spectrometry and proteomics.
Robert S. Hodges
(Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics) - Structure-function studies of
multi-protein complexes; de novo design of model proteins to test our
understanding of protein folding and structure and design proteins with the
desired biological/immunological activities; synthetic peptide vaccines and
antimicrobial peptides.
Lawrence Hunter
(Pharmacology) - Development and application of advanced computational techniques for biomedicine, particularly the
application of statistical and knowledge-based techniques to the analysis of high-throughput data and of biomedical texts.
Also, neurobiologically and evolutionarily informed computational models of cognition, and ethical issues related to
computational bioscience.
*David Jones
(Pharmacology) - How the three-dimensional structure of proteins and nucleic
acids controls their biological function. NMR is used to study the structure and dynamics of biological molecules
implicated in the development and progression of disease.
John W. Kappler
(Integrated Immunology) - Structure/function studies of the a/b receptor of T
cells and of its ligands.
*Jeffrey Kieft
(Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics) - Control of translation by RNA structure. RNA-protein interactions.
Tatiana Kutateladze
(Pharmacology) - Molecular mechanisms of protein-phospholipid interactions; structure and function of proteins implicated
in cancer and other human diseases by NMR spectroscopy; structure-based drug design.
Krishna M.G. Mallela (School of Pharmacy) – protein folding, stability and misfolding; molecular mechanism of disease; biophysical chemistry; biomolecular spectroscopy.
*Charles McHenry
(Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics) - Enzymology of DNA replication and reverse transcription. Molecular biology of
replication gene expression. Biophysical and chemical approaches to determination of enzyme structure.
Robert Murphy
(Pharmacology) - Studies of the biochemical regulation and pharmacological
control of the lipid mediators produced when Arachidonic acid is metabolized.
Nichole Reisdorph (Anesthesiology) - molecular biology; mass spectrometry and proteomics; biochemistry.
Christine C. Wu (Pharmacology) – mass spectroscopy/proteomics; macromolecule structure.
*Rui Zhao
(Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics) - Structural studies of the pre-mRNA splicing machinery.
For additional information, go to the Biomolecular Structure Web Site.
Back to Top
