9301706 Bohanon This award is under the International Postdoctoral Fellows Program, which enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twelve months of research at foreign centers of proven excellence. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a twelve-month postdoctoral research visit by Dr. Thomas M. Bohanon to work with Dr. Helmut Ringsdorf at Johannes Gutenberg Universitaet in Mainz, Germany. Dr. Bohanon and Dr. Ringsdorf will quantitatively study the specific recognition of proteins with ligand lipids using a fiber optic sensor. An evanescent wave from the optical fiber excites fluorescent molecules only within tens of nanometers from the optical fiber; the optical fiber collects a fraction of this fluorescence. This technique is highly selective and very versatile. They will study the specific binding of streptavidin to biotin, the effect of spacers on the binding, and the possibility of docking a second protein layer to streptavidin. They also will study the specific binding of antiflourescyl IgG and Fab to fluorescein lipids, and the effects of spacers on this binding and perform kinetic measurements. Finally, they will perform the same experiments using a quartz crystal microbalance; the combination of these two techniques will provide insight into specific binding that could not otherwise be achieved. ***
