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Posted 09/04/02
When she first came to Dartmouth, Jennifer Amoroso '02, from Rutherford, N.J., knew she wanted to take lots of science classes. "I was looking more toward medicine, but after a few chemistry classes, I was drawn in," she admits. "Chemistry appeals to me because of its problem-solving approach."
This year Amoroso won the chemistry department's 2002 Haseltine Award for scholarship and research and the Paul R. Shafer and Douglas M. Bowen Award for her contributions as a teaching assistant. She has spent the past two years working on protein structure and design with Amy Anderson, assistant professor of chemistry.
"We use chemistry and physics to understand biological problems," says Anderson. "We solve the puzzle of protein structures by determining the atomic interactions, figuring out, for example, which carbon is interacting with which oxygen and so forth. In those details we hope to someday contribute to designing drugs that inhibit proteins that cause diseases."
During her junior and senior years, Amoroso helped establish Anderson's protein crystallography lab. Amoroso worked on lab protocols, or procedures, to produce proteins using strands of a DNA template. The chemists first extract DNA from a fungus called T. niveum. They then inject it into live cells, such as the familiar, fast-growing bacteria E. coli, in order to grow the target protein.
"E. coli has its own proteins, so we have to selectively purify the desired protein," says Amoroso. "We add chemical markers, or tags, to the end of our protein so we can find the one we want."
Once the particular protein has been isolated, it's collected in a tube, concentrated, and crystallized. The crystal is then subjected to a powerful X-ray beam; diffracted light rays emerge and are imprinted on a film. The researchers rely on mathematical algorithms to interpret the X-ray data, which eventually reveal the structure of the protein.
"We can place every single atom in the protein and we can chart their interactions," says Anderson. "We learn how the protein is put together and which atoms bond to one another. It's important to learn the geometry of a protein to figure out how it works."
Anderson and Amoroso both agree that this line of study, called structural biology, is a fascinating combination of biology, chemistry, physics, and computer science. It's a field that Amoroso intends to pursue further in graduate school at Columbia University this fall.
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