Manuel Castro
Department: Biochemistry
Faculty Mentor: Charles Sanders, Ph.D.
Dissertation Description: Methods to Study Membrane Protein Structure
I use structural biology and biochemical techniques to study membrane proteins involved in human disease. Namely, a few of the membrane proteins interest are C99, PMP22 and KCNQ1, which are involved in Alzheimer’s disease, Charcot-Marie Tooth disease and long QT syndrome, respectively. Some common techniques we use include nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), dynamic light scattering (DLS), and electron microscopy (EM). I am also interested in methods development, designing new membrane-mimetics which can be employed in structural/biochemical studies of membrane proteins.