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了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了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射线结晶学是蛋白质结构分析中最常用的方法。这项技术要求将蛋白质培养成单晶体，晶体缺陷尽可能少。在许多情况下，很难生长出足够大的高质量晶体来获得x射线结构。最近的研究表明，一群较小的“微晶”如何在强磁场的作用下排列，使其表现得像单个大晶体一样，适用于X射线结晶学。我们将确定这项技术是否可以用来获得目前技术有问题的蛋白质的X射线结构。发芽的种子可以以任何角度被埋在土壤中。当然，对于正在生长的幼苗来说，知道哪条路是‘向上’是非常重要的，这样它才能将胚根和芽发送到正确的方向。正在生长的幼苗可以通过感知重力的方向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。通过使用强磁场向细胞重力感知结构施加力，我们将试图改变植物对重力的反应，以获得感知机制本身的更多线索。我们还将调查正在生长的幼苗对假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.