Friedrich Schotte
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Staff Scientist Laboratory of Chemical Physics, NIDDKNational Institutes of Health Building 5, Room 137B Bethesda, MD 20892, USA Tel: +1-301-402-6670 , Fax: +1-301-496-0825 E-mail: schotte@nih.gov |
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Doctor of Science, Universität Düsseldorf, Germany, 2000 [Thesis, English, cover: German]
Research Statement
We
investigate structural dynamics of proteins using
time-resolved X-ray crystallography. This technique employs a laser "pump"
pulse to trigger a
photochemical reaction in a protein crystal followed by a time-delayed X-ray
pulse to "probe" the conformational changes in the protein. Applied
to photosensitive proteins that perform a reversible photocycle, it provides a
mean to acquire "snapshots" of a protein molecule as it executes its
designed function. The proteins we to study are myoglobin, hemoglobin, the Photoactive Yellow
Protein (PYP), with a time-resolution down to 100 picoseconds.
The experiments are conducted at the
European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, and the
Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Lab in Illinois,
where there are dedicate beamline for pump-probe
laser/X-ray experiments. As a preparation for the
X-ray experiments the photo-excitation of protein crystals is characterized in
the lab with a microphotospectrometer for ultrafast laser pump-probe
experiments built by Philip Anfinrud and Hyun Sun Cho. The
X-ray diffraction work is a long-term collaboration between Philip Anfinrud,
Michael Wulff at the ESRF and Keith Moffat at the University of Chicago.