Focus on Fellows:

Congratulations to MBD Fellow Bin Fang and his Department of Biology mentor Dr. Irene Weber on the selection of their manuscript for the cover of the October, 2007 vol 18 issue of FEBS Journal! A summary of the manuscript is below: 

Caspases control cell death by cleavage of many protein substrates, and consequently, they are important therapeutic targets for diverse diseases such as cancer, stroke, nerve trauma, neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimers, immunodeficiency and viral infections. Although, caspase-7 is known to preferentially recognize tetrapeptides of the P4-P1 sequence DXXD, our structural and enzymatic analysis shows that various amino acids can be accommodated at P4 with small adjustments of the binding site. This research will help identify the protein substrates of caspase-7 and assist in the design of therapeutic agents.

Congratulations to MBD Fellow William Davis and his mentor Dr. Margo Brinton on William’s recent publication entitled “Interaction between the Cellular Protein eEF1A and the 3’-Terminal Stem-Loop of West Nile Virus Genomic RNA Facilitates Viral Minus-Strand RNA Synthesis” which was published in the September 2007 issue of the Journal of Virology.  In addition to publishing their work, the editors of the Journal of Virology choose this manuscript as one of the Articles of Significant Interest selected from the September issue.