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POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH

My post doctoral research work (at St Jude children’s Research hospital) includes structural and thermodynamic Studies of the Winged-helix DNA Binding Domain of the Proto-Oncoprotein Qin using solution Nuclear Magenetic Resonance spectroscopy, and Isothermal calorimetry. The DNA binding winged helix domains of the Qin and human FOXG1B are identical. We study the solution structure of cQin-WHD and describe structural and dynamic changes that occur upon DNA binding.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Jayawardene (now Muesse) D.S., Dass C., The effect of N-terminal acetylation and the inhibition activity of acetylated enkephalins on the aminopeptidase M-catalyzed hydrolysis of enkephalins, Peptides, 20 (1999) 963 –970.

Jayawardene(now Muesse) D.S., Dass, C., Fragmentation Characteristics of peptide-metal ion adducts under matrix assisted laser desorption /ionization post-source time-of-flight mass spectrometric conditions, J. of Mass spectrom. (2002) 389-394.

Jayawardene (now Muesse) D.S. et. al, Assignments of the 1H,13C, and 15N resonances of the winged helix domain of the proto-oncoprotein c-Qin (FoxG1B). J Biomol NMR. (2002) 243-244.

Jayawardene (now Muesse) D.S. et. al, Relating protein Dynamics to Function: Structural and Thermodynamic studies of the Winged-helix DNA Binding Domain of the BF1/ Proto-Oncoprotein Qin. In preparation.

PRESENTATIONS

Enhancement of proteolytic stability of enkephalins by acetylation of N-terminal tyrosine. PITTCON ‘98, New Orleans, Louisiana, March 1998.

Inhibition of aminopeptidase M activity on methionine and leucine enkephalins by their acetylated analogs. The 46th American Society of Mass Spectrometry Conference, Orlando, Florida, June 1998.

Pharmacophoric comparison of methionine-enkephalin derivative conformations. The 28th South East Theoretical Chemistry Association, Memphis, Tennessee.

A study of the fragmentation characteristics of peptide metal ion adducts under MALDI-PSD-TOFMS Conditions. 48th ASMS Conference, Long Beach California, June 2000.

Understanding the Qin molecular switch: NMR studies of the Qin winged helix domain. Frontiers of NMR in Molecular Biology VII, Big Sky, Montana, 2001

Winged-helix mediated oncogenesis: insight into mechanism from structural studies of the proto-oncoprotein Qin. Bio Polymers Gordon Conference, Newport, Rhode Island, June 2002.