Biochemistry
Description
Unlike many biochemistry departments, who see an interface between chemistry and biology, the CCNY Biochemistry department sees and explores the life sciences continuum from physics through chemistry to biology and cell biology using state-of-the-art facilities both in the department and in the New York Structural Biology Center (located on the CCNY campus). The biochemical questions investigated fall into three main areas: structural biology, molecular biology and chemical biology. Questions of protein structure and dynamics are investigated at their most fundamental level using NMR (Ghose, Stark). Membrane-anchored proteins, whose lipid-bilayer location makes their structures difficult to study experimentally, are studied computationally (Lazaridis) and, in the case of the olfactory receptors, using chemical biology (Ryan). From protein structure comes function, such as catalysis, and a variety of enzyme classes are studied in the department: galactosidases (Calhoun), methyltransferases (Simms) and ribonucleases (Ryan). Molecular and Cellular biology techniques are also applied to the study of cancer in human cells (Steinberg).
Faculty and their research interests
- Biology: Avrom Caplan - Protein quality control and cellular systems robustness
- Chemistry: Valeria Balogh-Nair - Biochemistry, biopolymers
- Chemistry: Mahesh Lakshman - Organic synthesis
- Chemistry: Ruth Stark - Macromolecular Assemblies
- Chemistry: Kevin Ryan - RNA biochemistry
- Chemistry: Michael Green - Physical Chemistry
- Chemistry: Ronnie Ghose - Biophysical Chemistry (NMR)
- Chemistry: Themis Lazaridis
- Chemistry: George John
- Chemistry: Barbara Zajc - Synthesis & study of fluorinated carcinogen analogs
- Physics: Ron Koder - Protein design, NMR
- Physics: Marilyn Gunner
- Mathematics: Sean Cleary - Group theory, geometry and topology
- Sophie Davis: Paul Gottlieb
- Chemical Engineering: Raymond Tu
- Biomedical Engineering: M. Lane Gilchrist
