Workshop

Submitted by admin on Thu, 2007/05/10 - 11:28am.

Second Annual Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics Workshop

General Information

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Speakers

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Dr. Ignacio Tinoco	In 1950, I was a 19-year-old junior at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque when the Korean war started. The likelihood that I would soon be drafted encouraged me to get my B.S. degree a year early, and start graduate school at the University of Wisconsin. After 3 years my research progress had gone well and my wife was pregnant, so I asked my research advisor if I could write a thesis and get a real job. I spent two years at Yale as a postdoc, then finally got a job at the University of California, Berkeley, where I have been for the last 50 years. My students have studied biophysical chemistry of nucleic acids to better understand their functions. They measured (1960-90) the ultraviolet absorbance, optical rotation, circular dichroism, and thermal stability of single- and double-stranded RNA oligonucleotides to try to predict the properties of any RNA. They used NMR (1980-2000) to determine structures of RNA molecules, including left-handed Z-RNA, pseudoknots, extra-stable tetraloops, and kissing-hairpins. Most recently, they have used laser tweezers to pull on the ends of RNA molecules. This provides thermodynamics and kinetics of RNA unfolding and refolding. Visit my lab website for more information.
Dr. Bill Weis	Dr. Weis received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1987 at Harvard University, where he worked with Don Wiley on the mechanism of receptor recognition by influenza viruses. He conducted postdoctoral work on crystallographic refinement methods with Axel Brunger at Yale in 1988, where he incorporated non-crystallographic symmetry into simulated annealing refinement and developed methods for modeling bulk solvent. From 1989-1992 he was a postdoctoral fellow with Wayne Hendrickson at Columbia University, working on the structure of C-type animal lectins and their interaction with carbohydrates, which included contributions to developing MAD phasing. He established his own laboratory at Stanford University in 1993. Research in the Weis laboratory centers upon understanding molecular interactions that underlie the establishment and maintenance of cell and tissue structure. The major areas of investigation are the architecture and dynamics of intercellular junctions, signaling pathways that govern cell fate determination, and intracellular vesicle trafficking. The group has also continued its long-standing interest in carbohydrate-based cellular recognition and adhesion processes in the immune system. The research employs biochemical reconstitution of molecular interactions, quantitative measurement of the strength of molecular interactions using a variety of biochemical and biophysical methods, and determination of the structures of interacting molecules by x-ray crystallography. Methodological interests include x-ray crystallography and small-angle x-ray scattering.
Dr. Peter Wright	Peter E. Wright is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Molecular Biology and holds the Cecil and Ida Green Chair of Biomedical Research at the Scripps Research Institute, California, USA. He received B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and undertook postdoctoral studies at Oxford University, UK, from 1972–1976. He joined the faculty at the University of Sydney, Australia in 1976. He was appointed to the faculty of Scripps in 1984 as Professor, and became Chairman of the Department of Molecular Biology in 1987. Dr. Wright has been Editor-in in-Chief of the Journal of Molecular Biology since 1990. His lab is focused on the applications of NMR to protein folding and intrinsically unstructured proteins, solution structure determination and dynamic studies of proteins, and protein–nucleic acid interactions. More information is available on his web page.
Dr. Jonathan "Brad" Chaires	Dr. Chaires is currently the James Graham Brown Professor of Biophysics in the School of Medicine, University of Louisville Health Sciences Center. He is also a Senior Scientist in the James Graham Brown Cancer Center, and is a Professor (joint appointment) in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Previously he was a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (Jackson, MS), with a joint appointment as Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Mississippi (Oxford, MS). A native of California, Dr. Chaires obtained a B. A. degree in biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He then obtained a Ph. D. in biophysics from the University of Connecticut. He received an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship for research in the Department of Chemistry at Yale University. Among several honors, Dr. Chaires was a President’s Scholar at the University of California, and received an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for research at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Gottingen, Germany. Dr. Chaires was named the “Outstanding Chemist” by Mississippi Section of the American Chemical Society for the year 2000. Dr. Chaires’s current research interests are in the physical biochemistry of nucleic acids and their interactions, with particular emphasis on the integration of thermodynamics into the rational drug design process. Dr. Chaires has served on the Biophysics Panel of the National Science Foundation, and the Molecular and Cellular Biophysics Study Section at the National Institutes of Health. He has edited a volume of Advances in DNA Sequence Specific Agents (JAI Press), and special issues of the journals Biopolymers: Nucleic Acid Sciences and Current Medicinal Chemistry. He edited a volume of Methods in Enzymology devoted to drug-nucleic acid interactions that appeared in 2001. He is currently a member of the Editorial Board of the Biophysical Journal. In addition to his academic activities, Dr. Chaires is a member of the scientific advisory board of the Energetic Genomics Corporation. More information is available on his web page.

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