Research Interest

In this laboratory we bring together skills in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, membrane and computational biophysics, and biomathematics. These latter skills are brought to the lab through a close collaboration with Professor Jack Quine of the FSU Department of Mathematics. Our goal is to characterize the structure and dynamics of membrane proteins for understanding molecular function; in particular we are interested in cation channels. Membrane proteins represent a major challenge for structural biology. Very few structures have been obtained to date, but new methods such as solid state NMR have the potential to be an important technology, complementary to solution state NMR and x-ray crystallography for solving these important drug targets. In previous studies of the channel-forming polypeptide gramicidin A, we have described detailed functional principles that influence conductance efficiency and conductance specificity.