Jesse Kleingardner
e-mail: jesse.kleingardner@rochester.edu
Research:
The overall goal of the project is to determine how heme conformation, particularly ruffling, affects protein properties such as redox potential in monoheme cytochromes c. A combination of NMR heme chemical shifts and vibrational frequencies from resonance Raman are being used to determine the extent of ruffling in a number of different mutants of bacterial and mitochrondrial cytochromes c. It has been found that the heme attachment motif heavily influences heme conformation, and the nature of this influence is being investigated. The impact of these changes in ruffling on axial ligand interactions and redox potential are currently being explored.