Research statement

Protein motion underlies both proper function and disease in biological systems. Many signaling and transport proteins require complex rearrangements for function, and some proteins, such as amyloids, misfold into toxic conformations. Studying these protein motions not only aids our understanding of diverse biological phenomena, it also contributes to an important fundamental problem in biochemistry: understanding how motions propagate from one end of a protein to another. The Petersson laboratory is developing tools to address questions of how dynamic proteins mediate communication and how the cellular environment catalyzes protein misfolding, from detailed in vitro folding studies to modeling protein motion in living cells. These tools include novel chromophores, which the lab synthesizes and incorporates into proteins through unnatural amino acid mutagenesis and synthetic protein ligation.

Source:  http://www.chem.upenn.edu/profile/e-james-petersson