Kad Lab Homepage

        Welcome to Neil Kad's Lab Homepage

 

Our Research

 

We use single molecule techniques to understand the physical basis of how proteins interact.

A number of diseases are linked to alterations in these physical parameters and we aim to find solutions to these problems.

 1) DNA Repair

 2) Muscle Contraction

 3) Neurodegenerative Disease 

 

DNA Repair

 

The first thread of research in our lab is to understand how DNA repair proteins search the genome for their targets.

We have developed a new imaging technology known as Oblique Angle Imaging or OAF. This allows us to raise single strands of DNA away from the surface thus preventing potentially artefacts. The DNA is then illuminated in our OAF system and we detect Quantum Dot labelled proteins interacting with the DNA. The figure below shows our setup:

 

DNA or protein tightropes

                      Surface beads are in green and Qdot                    labelled proteins in red and tan.

 

We work with the DNA repair system Nucleotide Excision Repair that is detailed below:

Ner Mechansim

 

We recently showed that UvrA uses a jumping mechanism to find damage whereas in the presence of UvrB a complex is formed that can also participate in a sliding search for damage.

Single molecule imaging offers a direct way of assessing how enzyme systems behave physically, kinetically and mechanistically.

This work has been performed in a superb collaboration with the Van Houten lab in Pittsburgh USA.

 

 

Muscle Contraction

 

We are also interested in how muscle activates. In particular we are looking into how the regulatory proteins are switched on by myosin binding.

This has particular importance in diseases such as Cardiomyopathies where point mutations can have fatal cardiac consequences...

 Please take a look at our previous publications on using laser tweezers to see how we are working to understand the molecular basis of these diseases.

 


Neurodegenerative Disease

We are also using molecular imaging to understand the basis of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's Disease and Alzheimer's Disease. This is part of a collaborative effort within the ERA research unit at the University of Essex.

 

Department of Biological Sciences

 

 

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