Biomolecular structure research presented

Dr. Larry R. Brown

Two top scientists who are leaders in the race to unlock the secrets of disease and how to defeat it through an understanding of biomolecular structure, were recently at MUSC from Jena, Germany, presenting their work. They were guests of the MUSC Biomolecular Structure Program and the College of Graduate Studies.

Larry R. Brown, Ph.D., professor for molecular biophysics with the biological-pharmaceutical faculty of the Friedrich Schiller University and head of the Department of Molecular Biophysics/NMR Spectroscopy, Institute for Molecular Biotechnology, and Jasminka Godovac-Zimmermann, Ph.D., head of the Protein Laboratory at the Institute for Molecular Biotechnology, Jena, Germany, gave presentations for the Biomolecular Structure Program on ãNMR in Structural Biologyä and ãToward Functional Proteomics.ä

Brown, an American with an undergraduate degree in chemistry from California Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. from the Australian National University, teaches and conducts research in Jena, Germany, as part of an effort by the reunified Germany to strengthen scientific research and technology in economically depressed areas of the former communist East Germany.

Godovac-Zimmermann received her degrees in chemistry from the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Martinsried, West Germany.

The city of Jena, Brown explained, has a significant labor force of highly trained and skilled engineers and technicians formerly associated with Carl-Zeiss-Jena, a large East German optical company, that the German government felt could be employed to develop new technilogical areas including biotechnology and new biomedical instrumentation to meet the sophisticated needs of biomedical research. Brown is one of a number of world-renowned scientists recruited to develop university laboratory facilities and conduct their research.

ãThe visit by Brown and Zimmermann was arranged by the Biomolecular Structure Program Committee as part of efforts to increase awareness among MUSC investigators of the utility of modern structure technologies in biomedical research and to assist MUSCâs administration in planning for development of biomolecular structure research on this campus,ä said committee chairman and Department of Pharmacology professor Dr. Daniel Knapp.

He explained that nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometry is one of the two key technologies for determining structures of biomolecules (the other being x-ray crystallography).

ãIf MUSC is to become a significant player in 21st century basic biomedical research, we will need to have capability in both of these areas,ä Knapp said.

ãDr. Brown built a cutting-edge NMR capability in Jena where none had existed before. While we do already have some NMR on this campus, his experience in building the Jena facility was very informative with respect to what will need to be done here.ä