Lab Activities

2023 Celebration of Student Academic Excellence Student Showcase

Watching Enzyme Structural Dynamics through Solvent Exchange Inhibitor Binding

Amandine_Torino_2023-04-26 13.47.09.jpg

Amandine Tirino, UB junior Biological Sciences Major 

Our lab uses near field THz microspectroscopy to observe vibrations of atoms in proteins, and provides information about structure and conformation which requires crystallized samples. We are interested in the structural changes of proteins that occur as a result of binding to ligands and inhibitors. I have been working on a method to bind lysozyme crystals to their ligand, 3NAG that can be reproduced experimentally without damaging the crystals, so they can still be measured. Our goal is to eventually use what we know about lysozyme-3NAG binding as a reference to understand the more complex TIM protein and its conformational changes when bound to different molecules. This work is being pursued by our excellent undergraduate BIOLOGY major, Amandine Tirino!  Let's go Amandine!

APS March Meeting 2023, Las Vegas, NV

The Markelz Research Group presented talks at the 2023 APS March Meeting in Las Vegas, March 5 - 10.

APS_main.png  2023-03-09 15.02.51.jpg  2023-03-07 15.25.04.jpg  2023-03-07 08.52.54.jpg

Edinburgh CO2 Gas Laser + Bruker Vertex 70 FTIR

The FIRL100 CO2 gas laser has been moved to Fronczak 224 for use with the Bruker FTIR.

The existing gas sources are methanol and formic acid.

Updates: August 2022 | Installation of this resource is underway.

November 2022 | Installation complete. Initial power-up successful.

FIRL100.png  Fronczak224_001a.png

APS March Meeting 2022, Chicago, IL

The Markelz Research Group presented several talks at the 2022 APS March Meeting in Chicago, March 14-18: