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Gonen Lab
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September 2011 - June 2018
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Our laboratory studies the structures of membrane proteins. Based on structure we try to understand function and what goes wrong in disease. We focus primarily on proteins in the blood-brain barrier. The long-standing question in our laboratory is how the thousands of membrane channels and transporters that exist in the cell membrane work together to help cells maintain homeostasis. With that question in mind, we study membrane proteins that are involved in nutrient, ion and water uptake, waste removal, signaling and communication.
Our laboratory is multidisciplinary. Over the last decade we have employed structural biology techniques such as electron cryo-microscopy (cryo EM), X-ray crystallography, NMR, molecular dynamics simulations, and used membrane biochemistry and biophysics to understand the function of the proteins of interest. Within electron microscopy we have published papers using electron tomography, single particle reconstructions and electron crystallography, however our specialty lies in electron diffraction.
A major part of our laboratory is devoted to method development in cryo EM. In recent years we have developed two important methods in electron diffraction, namely the fragment based phase extension and MicroED.
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