PROVIDENCE – Brown University was awarded $1.5 million of a $6 million, four-year grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate how genetic mutations cause differences in the way proteins encoded by genes fold and bind, the university announced Monday.
The grant is part of the NSF’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research.
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The project will be led by Marty Yterberg, a physicist from the University of Idaho. The study also includes Brown faculty members Daniel Weinreich, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and Brenda Rubenstein, an assistant professor of chemistry.
“The fulcrum for all the work is the premise — to be tested — that by considering simple rules of biophysics we can predict what a mutation will do to its protein,” Weinreich said in a news release.
Through the project, the team will model and then experimentally test how different mutations might affect each of six different proteins.
According to a university release, “Ultimately the entire study team will study TEM-1, RSV, HIV, dihydrofolate reductase, which is a key enzyme in malarial drug resistance, the lytic bacteriophage phiX174, and EgfA-PDF. They’ll predict and test single mutations and combinations in each, as they seek to learn more generally how mutation affects proteins and how that affects an organism’s traits.”
Chris Bergenheim is the PBN web editor.
