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Event Detail (Archived)

Painting Chromatin with Synthetic Protein Chemistry

The John M. Lewis Memorial Lecture

  • This event already took place in January 2019
  • Caspary Auditorium

Event Details

Type
Friday Lecture Series
Speaker(s)
Tom Muir, Ph.D., Van Zandt Williams, Jr. Class of 1965 Professor of Chemistry and associated faculty in molecular biology; chair, department of chemistry, Princeton University
Speaker bio(s)

Understanding protein function is at the heart of experimental biology. Perhaps one of the grandest contemporary challenges in this area is to catalogue and then functionally characterize protein post-translational modifications (PTMs). Modern analytical techniques reveal that most, if not all, proteins are modified at some point; it is nature’s way of imposing functional diversity on a polypeptide chain. Understanding the structural and functional consequences of all these PTMs is a devilishly hard problem. While standard molecular biology methods are of limited utility in this regard, modern protein chemistry has provided powerful methods that allow the detailed interrogation of protein PTMs. Dr. Muir will highlight the use of high-throughput methods for studying the role of PTMs in regulating aspects of chromatin biology. In particular, he will discuss how histone modifications, and cancer-associated mutations, impact the activity of chromatin modifying enzymes and chromatin remodeling machines.

Tom Muir received his B.Sc. in chemistry from the University of Edinburgh in 1989 and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the same institute in 1993 under the direction of Professor Robert Ramage. After postdoc studies with Stephen B.H. Kent at The Scripps Research Institute, he joined the faculty of The Rockefeller University in 1996, where he was, until 2011, the Richard E. Salomon Family Professor and Director of the Pels Center of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Structural Biology. In 2011, Dr. Muir joined the faculty of Princeton University as the Van Zandt Williams Jr. Class of ’65 Professor of Chemistry. He currently serves as Chair of the Chemistry Department. He has published over 200 scientific articles in the area of chemical biology and is best known for developing methods for the preparation of proteins containing unnatural amino acids, posttranslational modifications and spectroscopic probes. These approaches are now widely employed in academia and industry. His current interests lie in the area of epigenetics, where he tries to illuminate how chemical changes to chromatin drive different cellular phenotypes.

Open to
Public
Host
Barry Coller
Reception
Refreshments, 3:15 p.m. - 3:45 p.m., Abby Lounge
Contact
Justin Sloboda
Phone
(212) 327-7783
Sponsor
Justin Sloboda
(212) 327-7783
jslobodarockefeller.edu@rockefeller.edu
Readings
http://librarynews.rockefeller.edu/?p=5828


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