Jon D. Robertus

jrobertus@mail.utexas.edu
Biochemistry
Professor, Faculty
Director, Center for Structural Biology
Benjamin Clayton Centennial Professorship in Biochemistry
Jon D. Robertus

Contact Information

Office
WEL 5.266A
Office Phone
471-3175
Fax
471-6135

Research Group

Robertus Group

Education

BA, University of Minnesota (1967);   PhD, University of California - San Diego (1972); Postdoctorate, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge (1972-74)

Biochemistry: Structural biology, protein engineering, and drug design

My research group is interested in the structure, action and engineering of biologically important proteins, and in the rational design of therapeutic agents. A linchpin of our work is the determination of protein structure by the powerful method of X-ray crystallography. This allows us to see proteins at the atomic level, and in particular to see which amino acids contribute to the substrate binding and catalytic site of a given enzyme. It is often possible to bind substrate analogs to the enzyme and see how the two interact. With the three-dimensional model in hand we can hypothesize about its mechanism of action. To test our hypothesis about the mode of action we often clone the gene coding for the protein and express it in bacteria, in high yield. We then use the method of site-directed gene mutagenesis to specifically change key amino acids to other residues and measure the effect on protein activity. In this way we can determine if a given amino acid is crucial, important or generally irrelevant to the action of the protein. Besides using the protein model to guide genetic engineering work, we also use it to aid in the rational design of drugs. Many of the proteins we study are important to pathogenesis and inhibitors can be thought of as therapeutic drugs.

Representative Publications

  • Zhang, M., Monzingo, A.F., Segatori, L., Georgiou, G., and Robertus, J.D.  "The X-ray Structure of DsbC from Haemophilus influenzae" Acta Crystallographica D 60 (2004): 1512-1518.

  • Monzingo, A.F.,Gao, J., Qiu, J., Georgiou, G., and Robertus, J.D.  "The X-Ray Structure Of E. Coli RraA (MenG), A Protein Inhibitor of RNA Processing" J. Mol Biol. 332 (2003): 1015-1024.

  • Bortone, K., Monzingo, A.F., Ernst, S., and Robertus, J.D.  "The structure of an allosamidin complex with the C. immitis chitinase defines a role for a second acid residue in substrate-assisted mechanism" J. Mol. Biol. 320 (2002): 293-302.

  • Miller, D.J, Ravikumar, K, Shen, H., Suh, J.K., Kerwin,S.M., and Robertus, J.D.  "Structure-Based Design and Characterization of Novel Platforms for Ricin and Shiga Toxin Inhibition" J. Med. Chem. 45 (2002): 90-98.

  • Pascal, J. M. Hart, P.J., Hecht, N.B., and Robertus, J.D.  "Crystal structure of TB-RBP, a novel RNA-binding and regulationg protein" J. Mol. Biol. 319 (2002): 1049-1057.