Nuclear magnetic resonance studies of the Golgi reassembly and stacking protein from Cryptococcus neoformans

Abstract

The current research project is an extension of the FAPESP PhD scholarship hold by Felipe Mendes and is included in a recently approved FAPESP/BBSRC grant (Proc. FAPESP 2015/50366-7) aimed at supporting a formal collaboration between our group and Prof. Anthony Watts' group at the University of Oxford. The main part of the project is thus related to the student's ongoing PhD project in Brazil, which involves the Golgi Reassembly and Stacking Protein from Cryptococcus neoformans (CnGRASP). We previously showed that CnGRASP shares many of the uncommon features of the molten globule state. These results impact the way we think about GRASP functions in the cell and give one new insights on the role of GRASP in the mechanism of unconventional protein secretion. We intend to expand this scenario by getting higher-resolution data on CnGRASP structure and also on its individual domains. Such goal will be achieved by using Prof. Watts' expertise in magnetic resonance techniques and all the infrastructure of the Department of Biochemistry. The methods the student will be trained at Oxford will further improve our group's capacity to data analyses of non-conventional proteins, therefore positively affecting all the on-going projects in our group in Brazil. (AU)