Dr Tharin Blumenschein
Lecturer in Biomolecular NMR Spectroscopy
Research interests in the Blumenschein group revolve around understanding protein structures and dynamics, and their role in protein interactions and function. We perform protein expression and purification to obtain isotopically labelled samples and apply nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, complemented by other biophysical techniques as necessary.
In collaboration with other groups, we looked at three different cell signalling processes that are involved in cancer and apoptosis. The process of cell division and growth is usually tightly regulated in each cell, involving a number of proteins that interact with each other to maintain this balanced network of signals. Dysregulation of cell signalling is intrinsic to the process of cancer. We studied ADAM-15 interactions with different intracellular kinases (with Prof Dylan Edwards), the E3 ligase WWP2 interactions with its targets (with Dr Andrew Chantry), and the role of cytochrome c in apoptosis (with Dr Jonathan Worral, Essex), to determine the molecular basis for these functions.