Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics Graduate Student Opportunities.

Graduate Student Opportunities.

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Molecular recognition in the immune system and programmed cell death

• structural studies of proteins that regulate immune responses and apoptosis
• development of methods to rapidly defined protein interaction sites
• combinatorial and structure-based design methods for mimicking bioactive protein surfaces

Selected references.

Cook AG, Johnson LN, McDonnell JM. Structural characterization of Ca2+/CaM in complex with the phosphorylase kinase PhK5 peptide. FEBS J. 2005 Mar;272(6):1511-22.

Price NE, Price NC, Kelly SM, McDonnell JM. The key role of protein flexibility in modulating IgE interactions. J Biol Chem. 2005 Jan 21;280(3):2324-30. Epub 2004 Nov 1.

McDonnell JM. Surface plasmon resonance: towards an understanding of the mechanisms of biological molecular recognition. Curr Opin Chem Biol. 2001 Oct;5(5):572-7. Review.

McDonnell JM, Calvert R, Beavil RL, Beavil AJ, Henry AJ, Sutton BJ, Gould HJ, Cowburn D. The structure of the IgE Cepsilon2 domain and its role in stabilizing the complex with its high-affinity receptor FcepsilonRIalpha. Nat Struct Biol. 2001 May;8(5):437-41.

J.M. McDonnell, D. Fushman, C.L. Milliman, S.J. Korsmeyer and D. Cowburn (1999) Solution structure of the pro-apoptotic molecule BID: a structural basis for apoptotic agonists and antagonists. Cell 96:625-634.

B.A. Jameson, J.M. McDonnell, J.C. Marini and R. Korngold (1994) A rationally designed CD4 analogue inhibits experimental allergic encephalomyelitis. Nature 368:744-746.