Poster abstracts
Poster number 22 submitted by Stephen Pearson
Molecular Biophysics as a Probe of the Biological Roles of Essential Metals in Structure, Function, and Catalysis.
Cowan Group (Depeartment of Chemistry and Biochemistry)
Abstract:
Our research seeks to understand the critical roles of metal ions in biology. Some problems of current interest include the biosynthesis and trafficking of iron cofactors, and the molecular understanding of mitochondrial disease states related to cellular iron chemistry; the roles of metal ions in neurochemistry and neurological disease; structure-function studies of a mononuclear iron hydroxylase and its role in cancer; the design and investigation of novel catalytic metallodrugs against protein and nucleic acid targets of viral and bacterial pathogens; biomimetic metalloglycosidases and their application as therapeutics and in chemical biology against saccharide target molecules. These problems are tackled by a multidisciplinary approach that uses a variety of biophysical techniques; including, fast kinetics, multinuclear and multidimensional NMR methods, Mossbauer, optical spectroscopies, EPR, electrochemistry, isothermal and scanning calorimetry, confocal and fluorescence microscopy, FACS and mass spectrometry.
Keywords: metals, inorganic biochemistry