Week of 11/14/16

This was my first week back since October. As explained earlier, I was in New York City a few weeks ago on an opera trip, and last week I had to attend an unexpected funeral. Needless to say, I was very excited to get back to work at RPI. Although my visit this week did not go as expected, it was enjoyable nonetheless.

Yi had a big presentation to give after our visit on Tuesday, so we didn't have enough time to visit the lab this week. Instead, we sat in his office and he walked me through his PowerPoint, which he will present at a large conference in New Orleans in a short time. Before you speculate that this week was wasted, I will assure you that his presentation was very much related to what we are working on.

In his experiment, Yi used HSQC (heteronuclear single quantum coherence spectroscopy) and high pressure NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy) to investigate the relationship between pressure and protein states. Essentially, he was looking at the behavior of folding proteins under different pressures. Do more proteins enter the folded state under really high or really low pressures? Generally, Yi found the answer to be somewhere in the middle. Moderate pressures tended to work best for proteins in order for them to fold and take shape. Pressures that were too high or too low seemed to cause the folded proteins to denature and remain in the unfolded state.

I do not have a picture of Yi's presentation, but I have pictured below a sample NMR graph as well as a few images that illustrate that ideal pressures for protein folding lie not on the minimum or maximum extrema, but within the middle range of the pressure values.The wavelength with the highest intensity of folded proteins correspond to mid-range pressures.

NMR intensity image. Source: http://www.cbs.cnrs.fr/index.php/en/research-equipe1/rmn-haute-pression

This week did not go as expected, but it was really fun! I really appreciated Yi's willingness to share his presentation with me. He will do great in New Oreleans. Until next time!