A Multi-Spectroscopic Investigation of Protein Structure in Biosilica Composites

通过该奖项，生命过程化学计划资助了美国西雅图华盛顿大学Gary Drobny的固态核磁共振（ssNMR）小组和德国美因茨马克斯普朗克聚合物研究所Tobias Weidner的光谱学小组之间的合作。美国国家科学基金会将为美国团队提供资金，德国Forshungsgemeinshaft将资助德国团队。此次合作的目的是阐明生物硅复合材料中蛋白质和肽的高分辨率结构。这项研究不仅提供了蛋白质与二氧化硅接触时如何结构的原子水平结构图，而且这些信息将有助于理解与人为二氧化硅的生产和操纵所涉及的极端条件（高温、高压等）相比，生物二氧化硅是如何在相对温和的条件下建模成复杂的宏观结构的。这些合作研究对于理解化学生物学中一个重要问题的本质具有潜在的长期目标意义；即肽与二氧化硅的相互作用以及肽的二级、三级和四级结构以及氨基酸修饰在控制生物二氧化硅复合材料形态中的作用。这些方法将进一步发展一套光谱技术，用于结构表征蛋白质，因为它们存在于其他类型的生物矿物复合材料中。该合作的跨学科和国际性质预计将有利于由美国国家科学基金会资助的美国科学家和由德国科学基金资助的德国科学家。

With this award, the Chemistry of Life Processes Program is funding a collaboration between the solid state NMR (ssNMR) group of Gary Drobny at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, and the optical spectroscopy group of Tobias Weidner at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz, Germany. The NSF will be funding the U.S. team and the Deutsche Forshungsgemeinshaft will be funding the German team. This collaboration is aimed at elucidating to high resolution, the structures of proteins and peptides in biosilica composites. Not only will this research provide an atomic level structural picture of how proteins structure when in contact with silica, but the information will be helpful in understanding how biogenic silica is modeled into elaborate macroscopic structures under relatively mild conditions compared to the extreme conditions (high temperatures, pressures etc.) that are involved in the production and manipulation of anthropogenic silica.There are potential long term goal implications of these collaborative studies toward understanding the nature of an important problem in chemical biology; namely peptide-silica interactions and the roles played by peptide secondary, tertiary, and quaternary structure as well as amino acid modifications in controlling the morphology of biosilica composites. These approaches will develop further a set of spectroscopic techniques for structurally characterizing proteins as they exist in other types of biomineral composites. The interdisciplinary and international nature of the collaboration is expected to be beneficial for both the U.S. scientists funded by the NSF and the German scientists funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinshaft.