Genomics research is providing unprecedented access to expression vectors for thousands of proteins and it is critical to develop faster structure-determination technology to discover their cellular roles. Solution-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is a powerful and widely used method to determine accurate protein structures, but is also time consuming. Progress in understanding eukaryotic mechanisms of replication, transcription and translation depends critically on gaining faster access to structures of domains and proteins identified in human and other genome projects. We propose new technology for fast protein structure determination by solution state NMR. We will develop and demonstrate this technology on the 127 residue bromodomain from yeast Sth1p. Bromodomain has been chosen for its relevance to the regulation of acetylation states of histones in eukaryotic DNA. The BrD stucture will yield insights into its roles in transcription activation and repression protein complexes and should help to clarify the role of acetylation regulation in carcinogenesis. We will transfer this technology to demonstrate high throughput determination of multiple structures associated with breast cancer gene sequences in collaboration with the newly established Harvard Structural Genomics of Cancer Initiative. We expect that discovery of new eukaryotic protein structures will lead to a reevaluation of targets identified for drug design and to new directions for cancer studies.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Type
Postdoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (F32)
Project #
5F32CA089940-03
Application #
6633939
Study Section
Physical Biochemistry Study Section (PB)
Program Officer
Lohrey, Nancy
Project Start
2002-06-01
Project End
2003-07-31
Budget Start
2003-06-01
Budget End
2003-07-31
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
2003
Total Cost
$10,144
Indirect Cost
Name
Harvard University
Department
Biochemistry
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
047006379
City
Boston
State
MA
Country
United States
Zip Code
02115
Sun, Zhen-Yu J; Hyberts, Sven G; Rovnyak, David et al. (2005) High-resolution aliphatic side-chain assignments in 3D HCcoNH experiments with joint H-C evolution and non-uniform sampling. J Biomol NMR 32:55-60
Rovnyak, D; Hoch, J C; Stern, A S et al. (2004) Resolution and sensitivity of high field nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. J Biomol NMR 30:1-10
Rovnyak, David; Frueh, Dominique P; Sastry, Mallika et al. (2004) Accelerated acquisition of high resolution triple-resonance spectra using non-uniform sampling and maximum entropy reconstruction. J Magn Reson 170:15-21
Rovnyak, David; Filip, Claudiu; Itin, Boris et al. (2003) Multiple-quantum magic-angle spinning spectroscopy using nonlinear sampling. J Magn Reson 161:43-55