C-DIP Fellowship fund 2010 call: Interdisciplinary studies of proteins and seedlings in a strong gradient magnetic field

蛋白质分子几乎参与生物有机体细胞内的每一个过程。确定蛋白质的化学结构对于理解蛋白质与细胞相互作用的机制及其在细胞内的功能至关重要。这是了解许多疾病的关键。X射线晶体学是蛋白质结构分析最常用的方法。这种技术需要将蛋白质生长成单晶，尽可能少的晶体缺陷。在许多情况下，很难生长足够大的高质量晶体以获得X射线结构。最近的研究表明，一簇较小的“微晶”可以通过强磁场排列，使其表现得像一个大晶体，适合于X射线晶体学。我们将确定这项技术是否可以用来获得现有技术存在问题的蛋白质的X射线结构。发芽的种子可以以任何角度埋在土壤中。当然，对于正在生长的幼苗来说，知道哪条路是“向上”的是非常重要的，这样它才能把它的胚根和芽送到正确的方向。生长中的幼苗可以通过感知重力的方向来直接确定“向上”和“向下”的方向。植物细胞探测重力方向的机制仍有待充分阐明。通过使用强磁场对细胞重力感觉结构施加力，我们将尝试改变植物对重力的反应，以获得感觉机制本身的额外线索。我们还将研究生长中的幼苗对伪重力和零重力环境的反应，这将为未来的太空任务提供信息。

Protein molecules are involved in nearly every process within the cells of a biological organism. Determining the chemical structure of a protein is essential to understand the mechanism by which the protein interacts with the cell and its function within the cell. It is key to understanding many diseases. X-ray crystallography is the most common method of protein structural analysis. This technique requires growing a protein into a single crystals, with as few crystal defects as possible. In many cases, it is difficult to grow high quality crystals large enough to obtain an x-ray structure. Research has recently shown how a cluster of smaller 'crystallites' can be aligned by a strong magnetic field so that it behaves like a single large crystal, suitable for x-ray crystallography. We will determine whether this technique can be used to obtain the x-ray structure of a protein problematic for current techniques.A germinating seed may be buried in the soil at any angle. It is, of course, very important for the growing seedling to know which way is 'up', in order for it to send its embryonic root and shoots in the correct directions. A growing seedling can determine the direction of 'up' and 'down' directly by sensing the direction of gravity. The mechanism by which the plant cells detect the direction of gravity remains to be fully elucidated. By using a strong magnetic field to apply forces to the cellular gravity sense structures, we will attempt to alter the response of the plant to gravity, in order to obtain additional clues to the sense mechanism itself. We will also investigate the response of the growing seedling to a pseudo altered gravity and zero-gravity environments, which will inform future space missions.