Oxidoreductase dysfunction is becoming recognized as a major contribution to the debilitation of several common diseases that are highly complex with poor prospects for cure. Understanding the principles of function of the different classes of oxidoreductases, and their engineering tolerances and the thresholds of failure would almost certainly help in ameliorating the effects of the illnesses, by providing much needed diagnostic tools and pointing the direction to a cure. This proposal is aimed at understanding a fundamental part of many oxidoreductases, namely the delivery of electrons to and from catalytic or energy coupling sites. The PI plans to apply the consensus and generality extracted from our examination of natural redox protein construction and electron tunneling function to the design, de novo synthesis and assembly of simplified redox proteins; i.e., maquettes. By examing natural redox centers in the relatively simple stable, structurally characterized, heterogeneous peptide environment of maquettes, he hopes to describe the basic events that are coupled at equilibrium to the oxidation and reduction of common redox cofactors. Redox cofactors will be examined, both individually, and when integrated in multiple redox cofactor chain maquettes. The PI plans to activate intraprotein electron and radical transfer through these chains with light, oxygen or with electrical methods at the electrode/peptide monolayer interface. These maquettes are designed to ultimately access the kinetic factors that govern electron transfer and reveal how the equilibrium properties manifest themselves on the kinetic timescale.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01GM041048-12
Application #
6151050
Study Section
Molecular and Cellular Biophysics Study Section (BBCA)
Program Officer
Ikeda, Richard A
Project Start
1989-02-01
Project End
2002-01-31
Budget Start
2000-02-01
Budget End
2001-01-31
Support Year
12
Fiscal Year
2000
Total Cost
$282,266
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Pennsylvania
Department
Biochemistry
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
042250712
City
Philadelphia
State
PA
Country
United States
Zip Code
19104
Lichtenstein, Bruce R; Bialas, Chris; Cerda, José F et al. (2015) Designing Light-Activated Charge-Separating Proteins with a Naphthoquinone Amino Acid. Angew Chem Int Ed Engl 54:13626-9
Solomon, Lee A; Kodali, Goutham; Moser, Christopher C et al. (2014) Engineering the assembly of heme cofactors in man-made proteins. J Am Chem Soc 136:3192-9
Anderson, J L Ross; Armstrong, Craig T; Kodali, Goutham et al. (2014) Constructing a man-made c-type cytochrome maquette in vivo: electron transfer, oxygen transport and conversion to a photoactive light harvesting maquette. Chem Sci 5:507-514
Farid, Tammer A; Kodali, Goutham; Solomon, Lee A et al. (2013) Elementary tetrahelical protein design for diverse oxidoreductase functions. Nat Chem Biol 9:826-833
Raju, Gheevarghese; Capo, Joseph; Lichtenstein, Bruce R et al. (2012) Manipulating Reduction Potentials in an Artificial Safranin Cofactor. Tetrahedron Lett 53:1201-1203
Lichtenstein, Bruce R; Farid, Tammer A; Kodali, Goutham et al. (2012) Engineering oxidoreductases: maquette proteins designed from scratch. Biochem Soc Trans 40:561-6
Lichtenstein, Bruce R; Moorman, Veronica R; Cerda, José F et al. (2012) Electrochemical and structural coupling of the naphthoquinone amino acid. Chem Commun (Camb) 48:1997-9
Dutton, P Leslie; Moser, Christopher C (2011) Engineering enzymes. Faraday Discuss 148:443-8
Zhang, Lei; Anderson, J L Ross; Ahmed, Ismail et al. (2011) Manipulating cofactor binding thermodynamics in an artificial oxygen transport protein. Biochemistry 50:10254-61
Cui, Dongtao; Koder, Ronald L; Dutton, P Leslie et al. (2011) 15N solid-state NMR as a probe of flavin H-bonding. J Phys Chem B 115:7788-98

Showing the most recent 10 out of 26 publications