International Research Fellow Awards: NMR Studies of Protein Folding: An Evolutionary Perspective

Greene, Lesley H, Oxford

Investigators

Abstract

0000597 Greene The International Research Fellow Awards Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will provide Dr. Lesley H. Greene with support for twenty-four months to work with Dr. Christina Redfield at Oxford University on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Studies of protein folding. The protein folding question is the second-half of the genetic code, and it remains unresolved. This project postulates that a discrete group of evolutionarily conserved residues were specifically selected for and maintained throughout evolution specifically to facilitate correct folding in relevant biological time. The PI, Dr. Redfield and her group will use nuclear magnetic resonance to study the dynamic process of protein folding at atomic resolution. They will examine each stage of folding in vitro. They predict that evolutionarily conserved regions in proteins become structured on a faster folding time-scale than nonconserved regions. The proposed studies will test the prediction and provide with atomic resolution a window to view the folding process and further the boundaries of our current knowledge. Dr. Redfield is an expert spectroscopist. This experience will also involve her collaborators: Professor C. M. Dobson, Dr. Carol Robinson, Dr. Lorna Smith, Dr. P. J. Hore and Dr. J. Boyd of Oxford Centre for Molecular Sciences.