Biophysics

Primary Current Research Efforts of Rice Biophysics Faculty

Michael W. Deem

Immune response to variable or multi-strain viruses and vaccines

Physical theories of pathogen evoltion

Jason Hafner

Biological applications of plasmon resonant nanoparticles

Membrane electrostatics

Huey Huang

Mechanisms of membrane-active peptides, proteins, and drugs

X-ray/neutron resolution of lipidic structures in membranes

Ching-Hwa Kiang

Reconstruction of protein folding free energy surfaces

Single molecule dynamic force spectroscopy

Links above have complete descriptions of ongoing research programs

Examples of BIO research at Rice:

Single molecule force spectroscopy uses a microscopic AFM cantilever to grab individual proteins attached to a gold surface. This protein consists of eight repeats of the I27 domain of the heart muscle protein titin, a domain found in the extensible region of the striated muscle. The protein is stretched by retracting the cantilever from the sample surface at a constant velocity, and the force required to manipulate the molecule is monitored by the bending of the cantilever.		The mechanism of antimicrobial peptides was resolved by a combination of macroscopic and microscopic techniques: X-ray and neutron diffraction, oriented circular dichroism, and single GUV (giant unilamellar vesicle) experiment. The new concept is that the elastic energy of lipid bilayer is a key to the mechanism. We now widen the research to include membrane-active proteins and drugs. We continue to explore novel X-ray/neutron techniques to resolve lipidic structures in membranes, such as membrane fusion intermediates, pores, and inhomogeneous lipid distribution, which are essential information for understanding membrane processes, such as fusion, apoptosis and drug effects.