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The Development Of Tailored Amphiphilic Copolymers For Detergent-Free Integral Membrane Protein Extraction, Cameron Edward Workman

Doctoral Dissertations

Integral membrane proteins are prolific targets for the design, development, and delivery of pharmaceuticals. In fact, over 60% of all currently available drugs target these proteins to accomplish their therapeutic effect. However, integral membrane proteins remain the least characterized class of all proteins, accounting for only ~2% of all solved protein structures. One of the primary reasons for this low number of solved protein structures is that many membrane proteins lose their native conformation when extracted using conventional methods (e.g. detergents), convoluting accurate structure determination. In contrast, amphiphilic styrene-maleic acid copolymers (SMAs) were recently discovered to readily isolate membrane proteins …