RESEARCH: Research
Groups
Cluzel,
Philippe
Grier, David
Kent, Stephen
Kossiakoff, Anthony
|
Lee,
Ka Yee
Moffat, Keith
Mrksich, Milan
Norris, Jim |
Preuss,
Daphne
Scherer, Norbert
Scott, Ridgway
Sosnick, Tobin |
| Keith Moffat
|
Contact Information
email: moffat@cars1.uchicago.edu
phone: 2-2116
office: CLSC 245A
laboratory: CLSC 245
website:
·http://bmb.bsd.uchicago.edu/index3.html?
content=people.html |
Research Description
Essentially all of biology and chemistry involves motion,
of whole organisms, of molecules, or of parts of molecules.
Motion at the molecular level implies change in shape with
time; molecules can and must change shape very quickly. To
study those molecular motions which lie at the heart of biological
and biochemical function, we need to be able to study motion
down to the picosecond (and ideally the femtosecond) time
scale. X-rays are an ideal probe for studying the structure
of matter. We have developed new techniques for using the
X-rays emitted by intense synchrotron X-ray sources such as
the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory
and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble,
France to study motion in biological macromolecules, at present
down to the few hundred picosecond time scale. That is, to
the three spatial dimensions of crystallography we have added
a fourth, time. We use a combination of synchrotron storage
ring sources (whose design is derived from advances in high
energy physics) and technique and apparatus development (based
on a physical and computational sciences perspective), applied
to biologically-based problems. Our main question is: How
is structural information generated and transmitted at the
molecular level? That is, what structural changes ensue in
such processes as response to light, to binding a ligand,
to breaking a bond, or to a change in electric field? How
do these changes evolve and how are they controlled? |
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