Biochemistry: Basic assays of protein and lipid biochemistry (e.g. protein purification techniques, column chromatography, electrophoresis, immunoblotting, HPLC, protein and lipid labeling with fluorescent or other spectroscopic probes, etc.); Peptide ligation and creation of segmentally isotope-labeled proteins; Enzyme assays, etc.
Molecular Biology: Basic gene manipulation techniques (e.g., plasmid construction using cDNA libraries, subcloning, mutagenesis, etc.); Protein expression in prokaryotic and insect cell systems; Protein engineering; Production of semisynthetic proteins, including chimeras, for structural studies.
Biophysics: Extensive experience in the field of lipid monolayers, vesicles, and bilayers, including free and substrate-supported membranes; Reconstitution of peptides and proteins in membranes; Structural analysis of membrane proteins by a variety of spectroscopic techniques; UV-visible spectroscopy; Light scattering; Electron paramagnetic resonance; Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, including isotope-edited and attenuated total reflection spectroscopy; Fluorescence spectroscopy, including resonance energy transfer and quenching; Circular dichroism; Particle electrophoresis.
Theory and Computation: Membrane electrostatics; Quantitative description of interactions of ions, peptides, and proteins with membranes; Analysis of interactions between macromolecular assemblies using extended and improved versions of the Gouy-Chapman-Stern and DLVO theories; Analysis of protein structure based on backbone atom coordinates using new algorithms; Determination of the configuration of protein-membrane complexes using a combination of homology modeling, polarized FTIR and fluorescence techniques, and new analytical geometry algorithms.
