An Investigation of the Structure and Conformational Stability of a Membrane Associating Protein and its Petidic Ligands

最常导致致命疟疾的寄生虫的基因组将于今年完成。从这些基因组数据中鉴定出的蛋白质的结构阐明将加快寄生虫合成的蛋白质的鉴定和分类，这些蛋白质可能被开发为疫苗或抗疟疾治疗的靶标。在这项工作中，结构生物学的最新发展将被用于获得候选疫苗的结构，并确定影响该结构稳定性的环境因素。将采用一种新的方法来确定与这些蛋白质结合的配体的构象，这将为治疗方法的发展提供基础。

The genome of the parasite most commonly responsible for fatal malaria will be completed this year. Structural elucidations of proteins identified from these genomic data will expedite the identification and classification of proteins synthesised by the parasite that might be developed as vaccines or as targets for anti-malarial therapeutics. In this work, recent developments in structural biology will be employed to obtain the structure of a vaccine candidate and to identify environmental factors that influence the stability of this structure. A novel approach will be taken to determine the conformation of ligands bound to such proteins, which will provide a basis for the development of therapeutics.