July 26, 2006

Boxer and Pande Labs Probe Protein Electrostatics

In the Boxer lab, Ian Suydam developed the vibrational Stark spectroscopy technique to probe electric fields in organized systems such as proteins.

In a recently published paper in Science, scientists used this method with an inhibitor to the enzyme human aldose reductase, an important target for diabetes control, scientists measured changes in the enzyme's active site upon making mutations in the probe's vicinity.

Working with Chris Snow in Vijay Pande's group, they discovered that getting an even approximate agreement between the calculated and the measured changes in electric field required very large-scale molecular dynamics simulations and averaging.

For further information, see commentaries in Nature, and the C&E News.