Stoddard Lab Projects

This page is the gateway into summaries of ongoing projects in our lab. We have tried to provide outlines and examples of recent studies and results associated with these projects. Click on a thumbnail to go to a short summary of the project.  You may also be interested in our lab bibliography for these projects.

Structure, function and engineering of intron- encoded homing endonucleases and maturases

Design and engineering of proteins and enzyme catalysts

Structure, function and engineering of nucleotide synthesis and salvage enzymes

Structure and function of nucleotide kinase and hydrolase enzymes

Structural Enzymology

SUMMARY:

The overall goal of our laboratory is to characterize the structure/function relationships of a variety of enzymatic catalysts at the atomic level.  Much of this work is being extended into efforts to engineer novel properties onto existing enzyme scaffolds.   Most of our particular area of focus is on enzymes that act to modify nucleic acid substrates, and a unifying theme between many of the individual projects is the selection and engineering of these enzymes for targeted therapeutic applications.

The tools employed by our lab are X-ray crystallography, computer modeling, and genetic manipulation of the molecules of interest, combined with biochemical analyses of function.  The projects currently under investigation, and corresponding citations can be viewed by clicking on the images above.