Coupling protein dynamics and cell dynamics

这项研究的更广泛的目标是了解细胞如何利用活细胞中的拥挤和蛋白质的弱结合来控制其蛋白质。这个项目涉及物理、化学和细胞生物学的许多领域。因此，这项研究项目支持的本科生和研究生来自不同的科学背景，他们将获得知识和实践技能，以推进美国化学技术和分子和细胞生物物理学领域的教学。还将特别努力传播该项目产生的仪器技术，并与美国和国外的研究人员建立牢固的联系。因此，该项目将对生物技术和仪器仪表行业产生影响。这个研究项目的目的是观察单个细胞内部，看看它们拥挤的环境是如何影响维持细胞存活的蛋白质和核酸的。具体任务是找出蛋白质折叠和细胞内运动如何相互作用，细胞周期如何控制蛋白质折叠，以及剪接体的成分如何从蛋白质和核酸中形成细胞内。剪接体切割并重新连接我们的DNA，这样就可以制造信使RNA来制造蛋白质。人类离不开它，但我们对它的许多蛋白质和RNA片段是如何组装起来完成这项工作的生物物理学几乎一无所知。作为最后一项重要任务，PI将研究一种重要的工业方法，该方法借鉴了细胞的拥挤思想。所谓的“聚乙二醇化”通过用稳定聚合物修饰蛋白质来延长蛋白质的寿命，但稳定的生物物理机制尚不清楚。

The broader goal of this research is to understand how crowding and the weak association of proteins in the live cell is used by cells to control its proteins. This project makes connection with many areas in physics, chemistry and cell biology. Thus, the undergraduate and graduate students supported by this research project come from many scientific backgrounds, and will acquire the knowledge and hands-on skills to advance US chemical technology and teaching in the area of molecular and cellular biophysics. Special efforts will also be made to disseminate the instrumentation technology resulting from this project, and create strong ties to researchers in the US and abroad. Thus the project will have impacts in biotechnology and instrumentation industry.The objective of this research project is to look inside single cells to see how their crowded environment affects the proteins and nucleic acids that keep the cell alive. Specific tasks are to find out how protein folding and movement inside cells interact, how the cell cycle controls protein folding, and how components of the spliceosome form inside cells from proteins and nucleic acids. The spliceosome cuts and rejoins our DNA so messenger RNA can be manufactured for making proteins. Humans could not live without it, yet we know virtually nothing about the biophysics of how its many protein and RNA pieces are assembled to do the job. As a final important task, the PI will look at an important industrial method that borrows the crowding idea from cells. So-called "PEGylation" enhances protein longevity by decorating proteins with stabilizing polymers, but the biophysical mechanism of stabilization remains unknown.