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Welcome to the Prosser Lab Homepage at the University of Toronto.
We’ve just moved in as of August 1st, 2002.
The following images and papers are designed to give prospective
students and postdocs a feeling for what we do. For further information
and current projects, please contact Scott Prosser sprosser@utm.utoronto.ca
or tel. 905-828-3802.
Facilities: In addition to the NMR facilities at the downtown
campus which include an 800 MHz Varian Inova, we will be installing
a 600 MHz Varian spectrometer and 500 MHz solids/liquids Varian
spectrometer in the new Biotechnology building at the UTM campus
on the 1st of October of this year. We are also renovating
a chemistry lab and expression lab to complement the NMR facilities.
There is also a growing nucleus of PIs from the Chemistry department,
with expertise in bioinorganic chemistry, physical chemistry, &
organic chemistry, who are interested in biophysics & macromolecules.
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Many of the model membranes used in our NMR studies of small
membrane peptides, consist of a mixture of long and short-chained
lipids. These lipids may mix and adopt bilayered domains whose
dimensions may be comparable to micellar dimensions, and thus
suitable for solution NMR. Alternatively, bilayer domains
may be large and suitable for solid state NMR. -->magnify
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The UTM campus of the University of Toronto is situated on a spacious
campus overlooking the Credit River and is within easy access of
the downtown campus via an hourly shuttle bus or the Go Train (I
take the express train to Union station downtown which takes a grand
total of 17 minutes). You could also
kayak from outside the Biotech building to downtown, though you
should reserve about 8 hours for the trip. Seminars, meetings, and
grad courses will also be largely accessible via an electronic
classroom, complete with high-speed internet connections
and two-way video feeds.
Future Employment?
What skills will you acquire in this field of research? Biophysics
and Biotechnology is a rapidly growing field. If you choose to,
you can tailor your research to be marketable in this area. Small
and large molecule NMR, basic spectroscopic and small equipment
practices, molecular biology and expression techniques, programming
and theory, experience and interaction with screening and biotechnology
practices, are all skills you will walk away with after 10 years….
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O2 serves as an exquisitely sensitive paramagnetic probe of
topology, due to its selective solubilities in membrane interiors
and regions of high disorder in proteins. Since O2 solubility
can be correlated with local disorder, and since O2 enhances
differences in chemical shifts (19F NMR) and relaxation rates
(1H and 19F NMR) one can envision a multitude of NMR experiments
which utilize O2 to better contrast or define local disorder.
-->magnify
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(OK, I’m kidding about the 10 years). NMR is the most important
spectroscopic technique and familiarity with small and large molecule
techniques along with a host of complementary approaches, can take
you a long way in industry or academia. Finally, the Master of Biotechnology
program which runs year-round at UTM (if you work in this lab as
a student you’ll probably have the opportunity to assist in several
Biotech graduate courses) will give you areal perspective of the
Biotechnology industry as a whole and where it is evolving to.
Collaborations? We are currently collaborating with R. Hancock
(UBC), I. Shimada (Tokyo) and Lewis Kay (Good ole’ U of T). There
is always the possibility of traveling and initiating new projects
in exotic places; my student, Paul, who speaks fluent Japanese (as
far as I can tell) has been in Tokyo for the last month on a new
collaborative project.
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The paramagnetic O2 gradients may be used to resolve topology
of integral membrane proteins, using 19F NMR in combination
with cysteine mutagenesis (For details, see Luchette et al.,
JACS, 2002). -->magnify
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And on a fun note….Sports & Recreation – I train faithfully
for triathlons so if you run, bike, or swim you’re welcome to tag
along - don’t blame me if you get a heart attack. Triathlons are
not required to join the group but you will be asked skill—testing
questions on the Tour de France and the Canadian Olympic Hockey
teams.
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