Background |
Linda Nicholson is an Associate Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics. She received B.Sc. and M. Sc. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Virginia in 1982 and 1985, respectively. In 1990, she received a Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics from Florida State University, where she specialized in solid-state NMR studies to uniformly oriented biomolecular systems. As a postdoc at NIH, she worked in the rapidly developing field of multidimensional solution NMR spectroscopy of proteins. She joined the Cornell faculty in 1994. |
Research Description |
Professor Nicholson's research is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, "Protein Phosphorylation as a Biophysical Switch: NMR Determination of Structural and Dynamic Responses to Phosphorylation", by a Shannon Award from the National Cancer Institute, and by the New York State Hatch Program.
Life takes place through the concerted flow of numerous biological processes. At the molecular level, this involves highly specific and transient protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions. The specificity and function of a given protein is determined by its unique three-dimensional structure and by motions of groups of atoms within this scaffold. We are interested in observing changes in atomic level structure and dynamics induced by perturbations, such as ligand binding or phosphorylation, that are associated with these transient interactions. Such information provides insights into unanswered questions regarding the origins of binding energy and the mechanisms by which protein function is regulated. These questions are critical in practical endeavors such as drug design and protein engineering.
Our research involves the application of multidimensional NMR spectroscopy to investigate the structure and dynamics of proteins in different functional states. We are focusing on key proteins that have been shown to play important roles in biological processes such as thiamin biosynthesis, intracellular trafficking, viral replication, and signal transduction. Many of these proteins are implicated in disease processes such as Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, AIDS, and cancer. |
