Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry
Molecular Biology & Biochemistry Program
Welcome to the Web page at Middlebury College. I am a physical biochemist with a strong interest in biological processes. The above graphic shows the active site of two overlaid proteins, one in blue and one in green, that we have created using bioinformatics methods. These two proteins are models for the products of two genes found in Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that cause Lyme disease. Lyme disease is the most common vector-born disease in the United States with over 22,000 cases recorded in 2002. What is unusual about these models is that each gene has a different length and a different sequence, yet the active site amino acids, shown as space filling atoms, sit right on top of each other. These genes are not alone; the concerted effort during this last decade to sequence the human genome has resulted in over ten million new gene sequences, which have no corresponding three-dimensional structural information. Accurate prediction of protein structure from sequence data would open up the vast GenBank data set to direct inquiry about the biological function of genes and hopefully lead to better treatments for diseases like Lyme disease.
My teaching interests lie in describing the beauty of nature from a physical chemists point of view. I teach general chemistry (CH103,CH104,CH107), analytical chemistry (CH311,CH312), physical Chemistry (CH351,CH352,CH353), inorganic Chemistry (CH431), and bioinformatics(CH314). I also teach first year seminars on Shroedinger's book "What Is Life?" and Brownoski's book "The Accent of Man".
If you would like more information, follow the links on the left, or feel free to contact me directly.