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PAGE of Jack Quine
Charles W. McArthur Professor
of Mathematics, Florida State University
Florida State University, Department of
Mathematics
Director of Biomedical Mathematics
Faculty Member of Institute of Molecular
Biophysics, Florida State University
Faculty Member, CIMAR
(Center for Interdisciplinary Magnetic Resonance),
NHMFL (National High Magnetic Field
Laboratory)
address:
114 LOV
Deptartment of Mathematics, FSU
Most of the information known about the structure of proteins has been obtained by x-ray crystallography. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) is a newer technique for protein structure determination, and it is being used to find the structure of proteins which cannot be crystallized in their native environment. The structure of membrane proteins is one goal of our Membrane Protein Structural Genomics Project, Myobacterium Tubercolosis project.
Proteins are large organic molecules which have interesting geometric features, but they don't easily fit the type of structures favored by mathematicians. They don't quite fit on lattices, for example, although lattice models are useful, but they can be analyzed using a discrete version of the classical moving frame and some techniques from the theory of space groups.
In solid state NMR, orientational constraints are used to find structures and the solid state NMR experiment PISEMA is especially useful in obtaining this type of data . Our work develops the basic analytic techniques used in the determination of protein structure using orientational constraints, and develops algorithms for finding assignments and structures.
FSU and NHMFL Collaborators:
Students
Jeff Denny, now Assistant Professor, Mercer University
Partha Srinivasan, now postdoctoral fellow, Math Biosciences Institute, Ohio State Unviversity
Jun Hu, now postdoctoral fellow, NIH
For a list of publications in this area see my NHMFL homepage