Research Areas

Microbiology and Infectious Diseases

Structural Biology  and Biophysics

MOLMOL PlotShown is the recent NMR solution structure of the human XRCC1 NTD repair protein (left, 1xna at the PDB) and a mechanism for interaction with a human DNA polymerase beta-DNA complex (right, 1bpy at the PDB).

Computation and Modeling

An analysis of folding of protein domains in a tumor suppressor.
The p16 protein is a cyclin dependent protein kinase inhibitor and a tumor suppressor. The p16 structure (1BI7 from the PDB) consists of four ankyrin repeats. Based on a computational analysis (bottom image) of the autonomous folding units in p16, a C-terminal fragment (p16C) in red containing only two ankyrin repeats (top image) has been identified and shown by expression cloning, fragment production, and biophysical characterization, to fold into a native-like structure. The plot shows the Z-score (the higher the better for predicted complete folding) for all possible peptide fragments that have the Y-axis value as the N-terminal residue of the fragment and the X-axis value as the C-terminal residue.

Cellular Pathways

Cancer Biology