Grant for Exploratory Research: Synthetic Proteins for Electron Transfer using Macrocyclic Templates

该奖项授予堪萨斯大学化学系的Kristin B.Mertes博士，以表彰他在金属蛋白质方面的工作。其中一些工作将在加州理工学院进行。含有24元环的聚铵大环将被用作连接多肽链的模板。这些链由14个残基组成，预计会形成所需的基序，即4-α-螺旋束。铜或锰的双金属中心将被结合到金属蛋白中。一个发光的Ru络合物将与末端组氨酸的咪唑反应，闪急猝灭技术将被用来研究Ru和双金属中心之间的远程电子转移速率。这个项目将研究已知拓扑结构的合成蛋白质中的远程电子转移。由于合成蛋白质的拓扑结构是可以控制的，这个项目将测试研究多肽中远程电子转移作为形状和距离的函数的可行性。由于这种类型的电子转移对许多生化反应是至关重要的，这个项目可能与酶的设计有关。

This Grant for Exploratory Research in the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Program is awarded to Dr. Kristin B. Mertes of the Chemistry Department, University of Kansas, for work on metalloproteins. Some of the work will be conducted at the California Institute of Technology. A polyammonium macrocycle containing a 24-member ring will be used as a template for attaching peptide chains. These chains consist of 14 residues and are expected to form in the desired motif, the 4-alpha-helical bundle. Bimetallic centers of copper or manganese will be incorporated into the metalloproteins. A luminescent ruthenium complex will be reacted with the imidazole of a terminal histidine, and a flash-quench technique will be used to investigate long-range electron transfer rates between ruthenium and the bimetallic centers. %%% This project will study long-range electron transfer in a synthetic protein of known topology. Since control of the topology of synthetic proteins is possible, this project will test the feasibility of investigating long-range electron transfer in polypeptides as a function of shape and distance. Since electron transfer of this sort is crucial to many biochemical reactions, this project is potentially relevant to the design of enzymes.