Investigators

Raymond C. Stevens, Ph.D.,

Professor, Molecular Biology and Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), is the JCIMPT Program Director, and leader of the efforts in Eukaryotic Membrane Protein Production Technologies.
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.

Bridget Carragher, Ph.D.,

Associate Professor, Cell Biology at TSRI, co-leads the electron microscopy characterization of membrane protein complexes with Clinton Potter. The focus of her research group is the development of automated methods for solving the three-dimensional structure of macromolecular complexes using cryoTEM. The current goal of the group is to develop new technology to improve the throughput of the entire process, from specimen preparation to the generation of the final three-dimensional map. In JCIMPT-Complexes, they are focused on using transmission electron microscopy for the characterization of membrane protein-protein complexes.

Vadim Cherezov, Ph.D.,

Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology at TSRI, leads the efforts in stabilization and crystallization of membrane proteins and their complexes using lipidic mesophases.
Dr. Cherezov is a leading expert in the application of lipidic cubic phase (LCP) for membrane protein crystallization which recently contributed to the publication of the first two human GPCR structures, the β₂-adrenergic receptor (Science, 2007) and the A_2A adenosine receptor (Science, 2008). He is focused on elucidating specific effects of lipids on structure and function of proteins in biological membranes, using LCP as a tool to study lipid/protein interactions and to crystallize membrane proteins directly from the lipidic environment.

Peter Kuhn, Ph.D.,

Associate Professor, Department of Cell Biology at TSRI, leads the efforts on the use of X-ray diffraction and scattering studies 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 leading the physical sciences oncology center at Scripps, which is investigating the spatial and temporal properties of cancer metastasis.

David P. Millar, Ph.D.,

Professor, Department of Molecular Biology at TSRI, is the leader of the efforts in Fluorescence-based characterization of membrane protein complexes. Dr. Millar is a leading expert in the application of advanced fluorescence spectroscopic techniques to biological systems. Recently, his lab have developed instrumentation and fluorescence-based methods to monitor macromolecular association processes at the single-molecule level. A TIRF (total internal reflection fluorescence) microscope system was established to visualize the assembly of individual macromolecular complexes in real-time. This system has been used to monitor the oligomeric assembly of the HIV-1 protein Rev on a single RNA molecule (the Rev Response Element), revealing discrete steps in the assembly pathway and the microscopic rate constants at each step.

Clinton Potter,

Associate Professor, Cell Biology at TSRI, co-leads the electron microscopy characterization of membrane protein complexes with Bridget Carragher. The focus of his research group at the National Resource for Automated Molecular Microscopy (http://nramm.scripps.edu) is the development of a completely automated system for molecular microscopy using cryoTEM. It is his group’s goal to automate all processes from EM grid insertion to calculating the final 3D map. Technologies within the group that form the basis for this system include instrument control and development, robotics, and automated image processing, analysis and reconstruction. The group includes engineers and computer scientists. In JCIMPT-Complexes, they are focused on the use of transmission electron microscopy in the characterization of membrane protein-protein complexes.

Kurt Wüthrich, Ph.D.,

Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Professor of Structural Biology, Department of Molecular Biology, Department of Chemistry and The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at TSRI, leads the efforts to use nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy in solution for biophysical characterization and structure determination of membrane proteins reconstituted in mixed micelles with detergents and/or lipids. Dr. Wüthrich is a pioneer in applying NMR spectroscopy in structural biology, work for which he was awarded with a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002. In addition to his extensive research program at TSRI, he is a Professor of Biophysics at the ETH Zürich in Switzerland.

Qinghai Zhang, Ph.D.,

Associate Professor, Department of Molecular Biology at TSRI, leads the development of lipid and detergent materials for application in membrane protein structural biology. He is focused on the synthesis of novel lipid and detergent molecules to enable membrane protein biophysical characterization.