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John Spudich
Director, Center for Membrane Biology, The University of Texas - Houston Medical SchoolDepartment: Biochemistry & Molecular BiologyAddress: 6431 Fannin St., JFB 1.708 UT Houston Medical School University of Texas Health Science Center Houston TX 77030 Phone: 713-500-5458 Fax: 713-500-5499 Email: John.L.Spudich@uth.tmc.edu Web: www.uth.tmc.edu/cmb/ |
Education
B.S. Mathematics, Univ Illinois, Urbana (1967)
Ph.D. Biophysics, Univ California, Berkeley (1976)
Harvard Medical School, Boston (1976-1978) University of California, San Francisco (1978-1980)
Honors
Robert A. Welch Chair in Chemistry, 2002
Named Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, 1996
President, American Society for Photobiology, 2001-2002
Research Topic
Photosensory Receptors & Signal Transduction / Microbial Rhodopsins
Research Description
The primary interest in our laboratory is the mechanism by which photosensory receptors sense and transmit information concerning the color, intensity, and pattern of light in the environment. We study a widespread class of photoactive receptor proteins (rhodopsins) that consist of seven transmembrane helices connected by interhelical loops. The helices form a pocket for the photosensitive molecule vitamin-A aldehyde (retinal), and the receptor proteins physically couple to protein transducers that relay signals to sensory pathways in the cytoplasm. These photosensitive seven helix proteins are used for visual processes of various degrees of sophistication, ranging from detection of light-dark boundaries,light gradients, and light direction by single-cell microorganisms to high-resolution color image detection by animal eyes.
Selected Publications
- Spudich, J.L., Yang, C.-H., Jung, K.-H., and Spudich, E.N. (2000). Retinylidene Proteins: Structures and Functions from Archaea to Humans. Annual Reviews Cell & Dev. Biol. 16: 365-392.
- Spudich, J.L. (2000). Structural Biology: A chloride pump at atomic resolution. Science 288: 1358-1359.
- Béjà, O., Spudich, E.N., Spudich, J.L., Leclerc, M. and DeLong, E.F. (2001). Proteorhodopsin phototrophy in the ocean. Nature 411: 786-789.
- Kunji, E.R.S., Spudich, E.N., Grisshammer, R., Henderson, R. and Spudich, J.L. (2001). Electron Crystallographic Analysis of Two-dimensional Crystals of Sensory Rhodopsin II: A 6.9-Å Projection Structure. J. Mol. Biol. 308: 279-293.
- Luecke, H., Schobert, B., Lanyi, J.K., Spudich, E.N. and Spudich, J.L. (2001) Crystal Structure of Sensory Rhodopsin II at 2.4 Å: Insights into Color Tuning and Transducer Interaction. Science 293: 1499-1503.
- Sineshchekov, O.A., Jung, K.-H. and Spudich, J.L. (2002). Two rhodopsins mediate phototaxis to low and high intensity light in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 99: 8689-8694.
- Man, D., Wang, W., Sabehi, G., Aravind, L., Post, A.F., Massana, R., Spudich, E.N., Spudich, J.L., and Béjà, O. (2003). Diversification and spectral tuning in marine proteorhodopsins. EMBO J. 22: 1725-1731.
- Wang, W., Sineshchekov, O.A., Spudich, E.N., and Spudich, J.L. (2003). Spectroscopic and photochemical characterization of a deep ocean proteorhodopsin. J. Biol. Chem. 278: 33985-33991.
Lab Members
Lab Photos
Last edited on: December 17, 2003