Sun Sun


Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station A5300
Austin, TX 78712-0165





















Contact Information


Office: WEL: 5.266A
Phone: 471-3175

Lab


Office:
Phone:
Fax: 471-6135

Jon D. Robertus


jrobertus@mail.utexas.edu
Professor, Faculty
Director, Center for Structural Biology
Benjamin Clayton Centennial Professorship in Biochemistry

Research Group


Robertus Group

Education


BA, University of Minnesota, 1967
PhD, University of California - San Diego, 1972

Postdoctorate, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge (1972-74)

Affiliations


Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics; Center for Structural Biology; Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology;

Biochemistry: Structural biology, protein engineering, and drug design


My research group is interested in the structure, action and engineering of biologically important proteins, and in the rational design of therapeutic agents. A linchpin of our work is the determination of protein structure by the powerful method of X-ray crystallography. This allows us to see proteins at the atomic level, and in particular to see which amino acids contribute to the substrate binding and catalytic site of a given enzyme. It is often possible to bind substrate analogs to the enzyme and see how the two interact. With the three-dimensional model in hand we can hypothesize about its mechanism of action. To test our hypothesis about the mode of action we often clone the gene coding for the protein and express it in bacteria, in high yield. We then use the method of site-directed gene mutagenesis to specifically change key amino acids to other residues and measure the effect on protein activity. In this way we can determine if a given amino acid is crucial, important or generally irrelevant to the action of the protein. Besides using the protein model to guide genetic engineering work, we also use it to aid in the rational design of drugs. Many of the proteins we study are important to pathogenesis and inhibitors can be thought of as therapeutic drugs.

Representative Publications



Zhang, M., Monzingo, A.F., Segatori, L., Georgiou, G., and Robertus, J.D. "The X-ray Structure of DsbC from Haemophilus influenzae" Acta Crystallographica D 60 (2004): 1512-1518.

Bortone, K., Monzingo, A.F., Ernst, S., and Robertus, J.D. "The structure of an allosamidin complex with the C. immitis chitinase defines a role for a second acid residue in substrate-assisted mechanism" J. Mol. Biol. 320 (2002): 293-302.

Miller, D.J, Ravikumar, K, Shen, H., Suh, J.K., Kerwin,S.M., and Robertus, J.D. "Structure-Based Design and Characterization of Novel Platforms for Ricin and Shiga Toxin Inhibition" J. Med. Chem. 45 (2002): 90-98.

Pascal, J. M. Hart, P.J., Hecht, N.B., and Robertus, J.D. "Crystal structure of TB-RBP, a novel RNA-binding and regulationg protein" J. Mol. Biol. 319 (2002): 1049-1057.

Monzingo, A.F.,Gao, J., Qiu, J., Georgiou, G., and Robertus, J.D. "The X-Ray Structure Of E. Coli RraA (MenG); A Protein Inhibitor of RNA Processing" J. Mol Biol. 332 (2003): 1015-1024.