Protein Biochemist - Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates - New York University Abu Dhabi

Description

RESEARCH PROJECT DESCRIPTION Bioluminescenceis found in various living organisms including bacteria, fireflies,beetles, marine organisms, and others. Luminous organisms producelight from an enzymatic reaction that involves the enzymeluciferase and its substrates luciferin and ATP in their groundstate to produce a high-energy product in excited state that decaysback to the ground state and release energy as a photon of visiblelight. Luciferase assays are used in biological and medicalresearch, which currently represents the main analytical platformin the in vivo imaging, cell proliferation, and protein folding andsecretion. Investigating the kinetic and emission color mechanismsof the luciferase reaction will improve and diverse some of theexisting assays and develop new applications. In this project, wewould like to study the structural and mechanistic properties oftwo different enzymes that produce red and green luminescence. Thesubstrates of the two enzymes are identical, however, differentluminescence color is produced as a result of differentenzymes' structures. To characterize the color differencebetween the two enzymes, we will express and purify the protein inbacterial expression system. The protein will be characterizedusing different spectral techniques, X-ray crystallography, andenzymekinetics.

Responsibilities OfThe Position

• MolecularBiology: DNA cloning and manipulation.
• Expressand purify proteins using E.coli expressionsystem.
• Protein X-ray crystallography andthree-dimensional structuraldetermination.
• Enzymekinetics