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JeffREY L. REINKING, PH.D. |
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Biology Department |
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Research |
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My current research goal is the adoption of orphan nuclear receptors, or in other words, identification of the natural ligands of this pharmaceutically interesting class of eukaryotic transcription factors that have no known ligands (hence, orphans). I am exploiting eukaryotic genomic efforts on model organisms (such as Drosophila melanogaster, Caenorhabditis elegans, Ciona intestinalis and Daphnia pulex) to identify and clone nuclear receptor ligand binding domains into expression vectors. Purified recombinant protein is used as a tool to identify ligands; either by identification of fortuitously co-purified compounds; screening against libraries of candidate ligands; or pull-down from organismal extracts. Once successfully "adopted", I am very interested to see if the ligand-binding functionality of the nuclear receptor is conserved across multiple species, including humans. I am also interested in probing the thermodynamic parameters of the protein-ligand interaction.
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Adopting Orphan Nuclear Receptors |
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(as listed on Pubmed) |
