Biochemistry Commons^™

The Study Of The Structure And Dynamics Of Parkin Activation, Elaine Aisha Freeman

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Parkin is an RBR E3 ubiquitin ligase that has been implicated in both sporadic and familial Parkinson’s disease. Upon mitochondrial damage, parkin is activated step-wise to recruit and ligate ubiquitin to a substrate on the outer mitochondrial membrane. Disruption of this activation and ligation cascade is hypothesized to result in neuronal death related to Parkinson’s disease.

While structures of parkin for a number of these activation states exist, it is important to note they are not of full-length human parkin. These structures are often truncated and come from various non-human species to eliminate important, yet hard to quantify structural elements. …

Ni Site Structure And Function In Biological Sensing And Enzyme Activity, Hsin-Ting Huang

Doctoral Dissertations

Ni(II) is one of the important cofactors involved in various enzyme functions. For organisms utilizing Ni(II), a regulation system is required to maintain Ni(II) homeostasis and prevent toxicity. The focus of this dissertation is on investigating the relationship between the Ni(II) site structure and the function of proteins, a Ni(II) sensor and a Ni(II) enzyme. RcnR, a Ni(II)/Co(II) sensor in E. coli, controls the expression of the Ni(II)/Co(II) exporter proteins, RcnAB. Due to the lack of structural information, the mechanism of metal induced allosteric regulation and metal selection is not fully elucidated. Results presented here show that binding of …