Neutron scattering techniques will be applied to the elucidation of a variety of structural problems in biology. Distance methods will be used to complete the low resolution map of the 30S ribosomal subunit of E. coli which is already two thirds done. The map will be extended to include the binding sites of factors and tRNA. Individual ribosomal proteins will be isolated from overproducing strains of E. coli. These materials will be studied by a variety of techniques including neutron scattering in order to discover what the true native configuration is of these molecules. Promising preliminary results have been obtained by inelastic neutron scattering. This new method may be useful in studies of the dynamics of protein molecules. Several systems in which structural changes are known to occur will be studied by this technique to see what the dynamic correlates are (e.g. ribosomal RNA during ribosome assembly). Finally, neutron methods will be used to study the interaction of proteins and peptides with lipid bilayers in order to test ideas of membrane protein insertion and folding.
