Ian Thorpe
Macromolecular and Cellular
Structure and Chemistry,
Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA
Bio:
Ian Thorpe joined the Voth Group in September 2005, and his research
interests lay in combining principles of physics
and chemistry with computational and theoretical techniques in
order to elucidate the molecular mechanism underlying
chemical and biological processes. He has a strong
desire to explicitly elucidate the connection between macroscopic
observables and microscopic properties.
As he does this research, he employs related approaches to investigate the
process of molecular evolution in
the humoral immune system and has used the 1FLR antibody to chromophore
fluorescein as a model system
to probe the effects of affinity maturation on the molecular interactions occuring in the antibody binding site.
Latest Publications:
- I. F. Thorpe, J. Zhou, and G. A. Voth, “Peptide folding using multiscale coarse-grained models”
J. Phys. Chem. B (submitted 2008). - I. F. Thorpe, and Brooks, C. L. III. “Molecular evolution of affinity and flexibility in the immune system”
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 104, 8821 – 8826 (2007). - I. F. Thorpe, I. F. and Brooks, C. L. III. “Conformational substates modulate hydride transfer in
dihydrofolate reductase” Journal of the American Chemical Society; 127, 12997 (2005). - I. F. Thorpe and C. L. Brooks, III, "The Coupling of Structural Fluctuations to Hydride Transfer in
Dihydrofolate Reductase," Proteins: Structure, Function and Bioinformatics, 57, 444 (2004). - I. F. Thorpe and C. L. Brooks, III, "Barriers to Hydride Transfer in Wild Type and Mutant
Dihydrofolate Reductase from E. Coli," J. Phys. Chem. B., 107, 14042 (2003).