Previous Seed Grant Winners
Where are they now?
In 2000, Suzanne Scarlate of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics was awarded a seed grant for her proposal,"Role of Lipid Membranes in the Initiation and Formation of Protein Synuclein Fibrils."
This proposal focused on the protein alpha-synuclein which is a small protein
of unknown function and is the major is component in plaques found in Parkinson’s
and other neurological disease. Alpha synuclein is unstructured but will form
structured aggregates called fibrils and these aggregates comprise neurodegenerative
plaques.
Alpha-synuclein binds strongly to membranes and in this proposal, the team sought
to understand the structural changes that alpha-synuclein undergoes upon membrane
binding. Dr. Scarlata's laboratory was going to prepare the samples and follow
membrane binding by CD using the facilities at BNL. This study was successfully
completed and the work has been published in Biochemistry (Biochemistry 2001
40, 9927-9934).
The team's further work focused on determining the function of alpha-synuclein
and we submitted a post-doctoral proposal to the American Heart Association,
with the goal of acquiring more data for a larger NIH proposal. This grant was
awarded but the post-doctoral fellow that submitted the grant obtained a permanent
position elsewhere.