Faculty Research Overview
The Department of Biochemistry is housed in the Given Health Science Complex, part of the UVM College of Medicine, which
is located on the main University of Vermont campus in Burlington. Presently the Department has 14 full-time faculty members
as well as 5 adjunct faculty members whose primary appointments are in other Departments. Our Department is actively involved
in research designed to understand the basic workings of proteins and enzymes, as well as their associations with
macromolecular substrates including nucleic acids, metal ions, lipids, and cell membranes. The faculty’s research
programs are linked by their use of physical biochemical methods to study diverse problems. Our Department can be grouped
into the following interest groups (with considerable overlap between them):
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Cell, Molecular & Cancer Biology
Platelets at rest (left) and activated (right).
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With the completion of the human genome and the identification of thousands of gene products, Cell and Molecular Biology
will play an increasingly important role in the future. The goal of establishing a biological role for each gene product is
now paramount. Many researchers in the Department use cellular and molecular biology methods to study important problems
such as megakaryocyte development. Many of the faculty in our Department are also members of the UVM Cell and Molecular Biology Program and make extensive use of the
College of Medicine's state-of-the-art Cell Imaging Facility. Several Biochemistry faculty are also members of the Vermont Cancer Center.
| Christopher Berger
Beth Bouchard
Margaret Daugherty
Christopher Francklyn
Robert Hondal
Robert Kelm
Anne Mason
Scott Morrical
Paula Tracy
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Coagulation Biology & Disease
The three enzyme cofactor complexes involved in blood coagulation.
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The Coagulation group (often referred to as 'The Clotters') is a large and close knit group of investigators who are
studying all aspects of hemostasis. The work includes the identification, purification, kinetic characterization and
structure determination of new clotting factors & inhibitors, pseudo in-vivo functional studies, cascade
modeling, the role of the platelet and the identification of genetic risk markers. The Department has held an NIH
Training Grant in Hemostasis for over 20 years to support both students and postdoctoral fellows.
| Christopher Berger
Beth Bouchard
Kathleen Brummel-Ziedins
Saulius Butenas
Stephen Everse
Robert Kelm
Kenneth Mann
Jay Silveira
Paula Tracy
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Top: Sedimentation velocity data telling size and shape of molecules in solution. Bottom: An original Beckman Model E ultracentrifuge. Ours was dismantled in 2000 to make space for the
new instrument!
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Physical Biochemistry
The Departments roots in Physical Biochemistry are strong and can be traced back more than 100 years. Despite the
diverse research interests of the Biochemistry Faculty, many use similar physical biochemical methods to understand various
research problems. These methods include, but are not limited to: fluorescence spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, nuclear
magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) spectroscopy, analytical
ultracentrifugation, ultraviolet/visible/circular dichroism (UV/Vis/CD) spectroscopy, stopped-flow and quench-flow kinetics,
and X-ray diffraction.
| Beth Bouchard
Kathleen Brummel-Ziedins
Stephen Everse
Kenneth Mann
Anne Mason
Jay Silveira
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Nucleic Acid/Protein Interactions
Proposed mechanism for presynaptic filament formation.
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How is a DNA replication fork assembled and
regulated? How does a synthetase discriminate among dozens of tRNA species to find its one specific partner? How are DNA
double-strand breaks repaired? Understanding mechanisms of transcription, translation, DNA replication, repair, and
recombination are fundamentally important for predicting the stability or instability of genomes, for a molecular
understanding of carcinogenesis, and for the design of new anti-tumor and anti-microbial agents. These and other important
issues are being addressed by Biochemistry Faculty with interests in Nucleic Acid/Protein Interactions. Experimental
approaches employed include thermodynamic, kinetic, and structural studies of DNA-protein and RNA-protein complexes, site
directed mutagenesis of protein and nucleic acid components, plus biochemical assays for DNA synthesis, RNA synthesis, aminoacylation of tRNA, DNA recombination and repair.
| Christopher Francklyn
Robert Kelm
Scott Morrical
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Enzymology
Reaction catalyzed by thioredoxin reductase.
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Enzymes touch virtually every aspect of biochemistry. How an enzyme recognizes a substrate, cleaves it, and releases it are complex problems requiring a multi-disciplinary approach to understand. Many labs in the Department are taking a quantitative and/or structural approach to study enzymes in action. Research areas include: selenium containing enzymes, tRNA synthetases, enzymes and co-factors of the coagulation cascade, and DNA replication and recombination machines amongst others.
| Saulius Butenas
Robert Hondal
Scott Morrical
Jay Silveira
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Structural Biology
Representations (left: CA trace; right: surface)
of apo-human serum transferrin. Colors
signify sub-domains.
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The Department of Biochemistry, as part of the
UVM College of Medicine's Structural Biology Initiative, has embarked on a major program to establish structural biology as a
core research discipline on this campus. This program has been facilitated by major grants to UVM from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and from the Department of Energy (DOE). Ongoing projects include X-ray structures of: iron binding proteins, blood clotting factors, DNA-protein complexes involved in replication, recombination, and transcriptional regulation, and synthetase-tRNA complexes.
| Christopher Berger
Stephen Everse
Christopher Francklyn
Robert Hondal
Anne Mason
Scott Morrical
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