This SGER award provides funding for a series of preliminary experiments to demonstrate that X-ray Absorption Near-Edge Structure (XANES) spectroscopy has the potential to be used as a technique for observing changes in structure as proteins fold. These test experiments, conducted under different protein environments, should confirm whether an earlier observation that this is the case can be conclusively proven. If so, then XANES spectroscopy could potentially become a powerful tool in the experimental study of protein folding and have a broad impact across many areas of biological physics.
