![]() ![]() She was using organic solvents as probes to detect hot-spots of activity on proteins. “Way back as a post doc I was studying protein surfaces using this method,” Mattos told me. But it turned out, her work in so-called multiple solvent crystal structures initiated the entire foundation of her current lab. “That…That was very, very much by chance!”Įarlier in our discussion I asked her about something I’d read on her website which she casually disregarded as having not much to do with the present study. I asked her how she became interested in RAS and she chuckled. In fact, she rewrote the book on it: she discovered a novel regulatory mechanism for it when she alighted on something called an allosteric binding site, or a part of the molecule that determines its functional activity at another, remote part. ![]() She’s spent thousands of hours thinking about this protein. ![]() One such anecdote surfaced last month when I was talking with Carla Mattos about the a protein called RAS that promotes cellular proliferation. But sometimes the responses are much more unexpected. And I’m certain I never would be writing this blog if it hadn’t been for those years. I spent nearly a decade working in chemistry labs because my undergraduate advisor inspired me so much. Sometimes it’s as simple as “my graduate advisor was working on this stuff and I followed suit,” which is by no means a boring response. One of my favorite questions to ask is “how did you get interested in this line of work?” It almost always brings with it a great anecdote. When I talk to researchers about new papers or grants, I ask way more questions than I can possibly cover in the body of a article. ![]()
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