A SAXS STUDY OF THE LIGHT-SENSING REACTION OF PLANT AND BACTERIAL PHYTOCHROMES

这个子项目是许多研究子项目中利用 资源由NIH/NCRR资助的中心拨款提供。子项目和 调查员(PI)可能从NIH的另一个来源获得了主要资金， 并因此可以在其他清晰的条目中表示。列出的机构是 该中心不一定是调查人员的机构。 蛋白质光感受器使生物有机体能够感知、处理和传输环境光中包含的信息。光照强度是否足以支持增长？现在是一天/一年中的什么时候？是不是邻近的生物体阻碍了阳光的接触？植物和细菌使用光敏色素家族的光感受器来寻找所有这些问题的答案。我们想要了解光敏色素的分子机制吗？生物功能。光敏色素是一种大的、水溶性的多结构域光感受器。光致变色蛋白的光激活已被证明可以诱导大规模的构象变化。大多数光敏色素结构域的蛋白质折叠都是已知的，这使得我们可以通过同源建模来建立这些结构域的分子模型。这项研究的目标是利用小角X射线散射数据将各个结构域的分子模型组装成全长光敏色素的模型。此外，我们想要确定这种结构域排列是如何因光激活而改变的。

This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Protein photoreceptors allow biological organisms to sense, process and transmit the information contained in ambient light. Are light intensities sufficient to support growth? What time of day / year is it? Is a neighboring organism blocking access to sunlight? Plants and bacteria use photoreceptors from the phytochrome family to find the answer to all of these questions. We want to understand the molecular mechanism underlying phytochromes? biological function. Phytochromes are large, water-soluble multi-domain photoreceptors. Light activation of phytochromes has been shown to induce large-scale conformational changes. The protein fold for most phytochrome domains is known, thus allowing us to built molecular model of these domains by homology modeling. The goal of the proposed research is to use Small Angle X-ray scattering data to assemble the molecular models of individual domains into a model for the full-length phytochrome. In addition we would want to determine how this domain arrangement changes as a result of light-activation.