My research addresses fundamental questions about molecular structure and function of non-crystalline solids utilizing magic-angle spinning solid-state NMR spectroscopy along with a range of other chemical and biophysical methods.  In this seminar, I will describe our recent results reporting the first high-resolution structure of full length alpha-synuclein fibrils, the protein most abundant in Lewy bodies and implicated in Parkinson’s disease propagation, and the mode of action of the antifungal drug amphotericin B, which binds and extracts sterols from lipid bilayers. 

Bio:  Prof. Chad Rienstra was born and raised in western Michigan, attended Macalester College in St. Paul, MN for undergraduate studies in chemistry and mathematics, earned his Ph.D. with Robert Griffin at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1999), and was a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow with Ann McDermott at Columbia University prior to joining the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2002.  His awards include National Science Foundation CAREER, Sloan Fellow, Cottrell Scholar, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Transformative Award Recipient of NIH.  His research expertise is in solid-state NMR spectroscopy and its application to structure determination of membrane proteins, fibrils and small molecule drugs. 

Webcast link: http://keckmedia.usc.edu/mediasite/catalog/catalogs/zniseminars.aspx