About JCIMPT
Mission:
The mission of the Joint Center for Innovative Membrane Protein Technologies (JCIMPT) is to develop and disseminate methods and technologies for structure-grade production of integral membrane proteins. Miniaturization and automation are major components in the systematic investigation of membrane proteins and in the development of novel genetically engineered expression systems and sample preparation technologies. The structure of the JCIMPT includes three primary projects: Membrane Protein Expression; Membrane Protein Stabilization;and Membrane Protein Biophysical Analysis.
Investigators:
Raymond C. Stevens, Ph.D., Professor of Molecular Biology and Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), is the JCIMPT Program Director, and leader of the efforts in Mammalian Protein Expression. Dr. Stevens is a leading expert in structural genomics, in particular in technology development in the area of protein expression, purification, crystallization and imaging. He has a decade long research program in membrane protein research and lipid chemistry. He was a founding member of the Joint Center for Structural Genomics (JCSG) with key responsibility for the development of the crystallomics core covering process activities from cloning to generation of protein crystals. He has extensive experience managing large groups of researchers. While founder and director of Science and Technology at the biotech company Syrrx, Dr. Stevens directed more than 80 scientists in the startup of one of the first industrial high-throughput structural biology companies.
Geoffrey A. Chang, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Molecular Biology and the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at TSRI, leads the efforts in Cell-Free Membrane Protein Expression. Dr. Chang is a well respected membrane protein structural biologist with extensive experience in membrane protein bacterial expression, purification, and crystallization, as well as sample preparation and biophysical analysis. For the past year, Dr. Chang has been collecting preliminary data on the use of cell free expression of membrane proteins.
M.G. Finn, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Chemistry, Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology and Center for Integrative Molecular Biosciences at TSRI, leads the efforts of the amphiphile synthetic chemistry laboratory to develop novel agents to stabilize membrane proteins.
Peter Kuhn, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Cell Biology at TSRI, leads the efforts on the use of biophysical technologies for the investigation of membrane proteins. Dr. Kuhn has extensive experience in structural biology methods and process development, and biophysical characterization of proteins in a high-throughput approach. He is a biophysicist by background and was a member of the leadership team of the Joint Center for Structural Genomics with the responsibility of directing the overall structure determination process and the optimization of the process flow. Currently, he is also directing the Scripps PARC Institute for Advanced Biomedical Sciences, which is developing novel and miniaturized approaches to investigate biophysical and biochemical properties of proteins and macromolecular complexes.
Kurt Wüthrich, Ph.D., Professor of Molecular Biology at TSRI, leads the efforts in Biophysical Analysis by NMR. Dr. Wüthrich is a principal pioneer in applying nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to determine with biological macromolecules in solution, work for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002. In addition to his extensive research program at TSRI, he is also Deputy Director and a Principal Investigator in the Zürich-based National Center of Competence in Research Structural Biology (NCCR Structural Biology). The Wüthrich Group at TSRI recently moved into newly constructed molecular biology/biochemistry laboratories (October 2001), and new NMR instrumentation for the Wüthrich Group has been added to the instrument pool of the TSRI. The current research program has a focus on applying NMR in structural genomics , which has already produced structures within the JCSG pipeline.
Mark J. Yeager, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Cell Biology and Molecular Biology at TSRI, leads the development of protein stabilization reagents such as mAbs and lipid rafts. Dr. Yeager is a skilled membrane protein structural biologist with a particular emphasis in electron microscopy.
Qinghai Zhang, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology at TSRI, is focused on the synthesis of novel lipid and detergent molecules to enable membrane protein biophysical characterization.