News from Belfort Group People

• Georges Belfort recently gave seminars on "Opportunities for Engineers in Biotechnology (Bioprocessing, Genomics and Proteomics): Research and Education" at "NSF Converging Technologies Grant Seminar" Union College, Schenectady, Monday may 17th, 2004, on "Protein Unfolding at Interfaces: Slow Dynamics of alpha-Helix to beta-Sheet Transition and Possible Relevance to Van Gogh's Glair (Egg White Varnish)" at the Neurosciences Imaging Reseach Center, Albany Medical College, Albany, NY, June 3rd, 2004, on "Protein Unfolding at Interfaces: Slow Dynamics of alpha-Helix to beta-Sheet Transition and Possible Relevance to Van Gogh's Glair (Egg White Varnish)" at Institut für Medizinische Physik und Biophysik, Universität Münster, Germany , May 21, 2004 and on "Advice to a Young Membrane Scientist"(with due respect to Peter Medawar) or My Life in Membranes" at the Advanced Membrane Technology II Meeting, Kloster Irsee, Irsee, Germany, Thursday, May 27, 2004, and on "Global Model for Optimizing Crossflow Microfiltration and Ultrafiltration Processes: A New Predictive and Design Tool" at Fouling and Critical flux: Theory and Applications Workshop Lappeenranta University of technology, Lappeenranta, Finland, June 17, 2004.
  
  
• Several members of the Belfort group will be travelling to New Haven to participate in the forthcoming 78th ACS Colloid and Surface Science Symposium,Biocolloids and Biointerfaces, New Haven, CT, June 20-23, 2004. Ananth Sethuraman will speak on "Protein Rearrangement at Solid-Liquid Interfaces", Jun miao will present an oral talk on " Microfuidics on a Rotating CD: Single-Step Affinity Purification of Proteins" and Georges Belfort will talk on "Protein Stability at SAM Interfaces". Belfort and Paul Van Tassell of Yale organized and will chair 6 sessions on "Biocolloids and Biosurfaces" at this meeting.
  
  
• Dr Parbati Biswas has rejoined the Belfort and garde group as Post Doc to work on molecular simulation of structural changes during intein cleavage and splicing.
  
  
• Dr Tara Morcone Snyder spent three days in April leaning how to conduct a hydrogen-deuterium exchange experiment with proteins with the research group of Professor Eric Fernandez at the University of Virginia, Charlotte.
  
  
• Graduate student Ananth Sethuraman and Georges Belfort presented papers at the recent American Chemical Society Meeting in Anaheim, March 28-April 3, 2004.  The titles of theri papers were "Substrate-induced protein unfolding at model interfaces" and "Optimal recovery of therapeutic proteins in crossflow microfiltration: Interplay of electrostatics and hydrodynamics", respectively.
  
  
• April 20-22, 2004: Aditi Das, graduate student in Professor Michael Hecht's group in the Chemistry Department at Princeton University visited Ananth Sethuraman and our research group in order to test her synthetic protein's stability on solid substrates.
  
  
• Sad announcement: A good friend of Professor Belfort's, Professor Czaba Horvath of Yale University, passed away after a long illness.  He was Professor Steven Cramer's PhD advisor and will be sadly missed.
  
  
• Anathkrishnan Sethuraman and Georges Belfort presented oral papers at recent Material Research Society Meeting in Bostion in Dec. 2003. The titles of their papers were "Protein (Lysozyme) Stability at the Interfaces of Polymeric Biomaterials", and "Discriminate Surface Molecular Recognition Sites on a Microporous Substrate: A New Approach", respectively.
  
  
• Belfort's Research Group welcomes three new co-advised Ph.D. graduate students. Adith Venkiteshwaran, Arpan Nayak, Brian Pereira will be doing their Ph.D. researches on molecular modeling and measurement of peptides with solid substrates (co-advisor: S. Kumar); modification of nano-filtration membranes for reduced natrual organic matter fouling (co-advisor: C. Kilduff) and molecular modeling and measurement of intein conformation during cleavage and splicing (co-advisor: S. Garde), respectively.
  
  
• Six members of Belfort research group attended AICHE annual meeting in San Francisco from Nov. 16 to Nov. 21. Two undergraduates presented posters. Julie Manette-Wright presented a poster with Anathkrishnan Sethuraman and Georges Belfort, entitled "Adsorption of Proteins on Surfaces". Jun Miao presented an oral presentation with co-authors Wu Wei, Thomas Spielmann, Victoria Derbyshire, Marlene Belfort and Georges Belfort, entitled "Microfluidics on a Rotating CD: Single-Step Affinity Purification of Proteins". Ananthkrishnan Sethuraman presented a poster entitled "Substrate Induced Changes in Protein Conformational Structure: Effect of Surface Chemistry". Gautam Lal Baruah gave an oral presentation entitled "Interplay of Electrostatics and Hydrodynamics in the Recovery of Therapeutic Proteins from Transgenic Goat Milk by Crossflow Microfiltration" and a poster entitled "Expanded Bed Adsorption Chromatography as the Preliminary Purification Step in the Recovery of Therapeutic Proteins from Transgenic Goat Milk". Georges Belfort gave two presentations entitled "Protein (Lysozyme) Unfolding at Interfaces: Slow Dynamics of Alpha-Helix to Beta-Sheet Transition" and "Understanding Intein Cleavage: Linking QM/MD Calculations with Molecular Biology Experiments".
  
  
• The Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at RPI hosted a dinner for Georges Belfort at Padovani's restaurant (at the Milano Hotel) in honor of his induction into the National Academy of Engineering. In addition to faculty members, several friends and family members were also invited, including Georges Belfort's brother-Linsay Leveen, Clark Colton (MIT), Edward Cussler (University of Minnesota), Marc Coppens (Delft University), Andrew Zydney (Pennsylvania State University), Robert van Reis (Genentech, Inc.), David Wood (Princeton University), Giulio Sarti (University of Bologna), and Todd Przybycien (Carnegie Mellon Univeristy).
  
  
• Dr Tara Morcone Snyder, morcot@rpi.edu, from Department of Chemistry, Duke University, joined our group in November to work on the biophysics of intein cleavage.
  
  
• Georges Belfort visited The Chemistry Department of Hunter College of the City University of New York on October 24, 2003. He presented a seminar entitled "Factors that influence the stability of proteins at polymeric interfaces: Implications for recovery processes".
  
  
• Georges Belfort (PI) together with Shekhar Garde, gardes@rpi.edu, of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Saroj Nayak, nayaks@rpi.edu, of Physics, Victoria Derbyshire, vicky.derbyshire@wadsworth.org, and Marlene Belfort, Marlene.Belfort@wadsworth.org, of the Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health, have been awarded a four-year cross-disciplinary, multi-investigator, multi-institutional grant entitle "NIRT: Intein Protiens as Nanoswitches for Biotechnology: Linking Molecular Modeling with Biophysical and Genetic Methods". The goals of this research project are to determine the underlying principles of the splicing and cleavage reactions that occur during protein processing and to use this understanding to design a molecular nanoswitch that exhibits desirable properties for use in functional genomics and proteomics. This work will culminate in the use of the nanoswitch to perform protein separation on a fluidics chip platform.
  
  
• Dr Chao Zhu, zhuc@rpi.edu, Chemistry Department, State University of New York - College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, NY, has joined our research group in August 2003. He will synthesize new monomers for photo-graft polymerization onto synthetic polymer membranes.
  
  
• Graduate student, Gautam Lal Baruah, baruag@rpi.edu, presented a paper entitled "Optimization of the recovery of therapeutic proteins from transgenic goat milk by crossflow microfiltration" at the North American Membrane Society's Annual Meeting, Jackson Hole, WY, May 19, 2003. In addition, Belfort group collaborator, Professor Chip Kilduff, Civil and Environmental Engineering, RPI, presented a paper entitled "Application of a combined pore blockage-cake formation model to describe ultrafiltration membrane fouling by natural organic matter" at the same meeting.
  
  
• Dr Mina Han, minahjp@yahoo.co.kr, ex-post-doc from the Belfort group, has temporarily joined Yonsei University while she is waiting for papers to enter Japan as a scientist at RIKEN (The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research), Wako Main Campus, Wako, Saitama, Japan where she will conduct chemical research. Under the direction of Ananth Sethuraman, Brian Meierdiercks meierb@rpi.edu will continue the 2-D molecular imprinting project started by Dr. Han. We wish her lots of luck and success in her new position at Yonsei and then at RIKEN.
  
  
• Dr Brian Frank bpfrank@gw.dec.state.ny.us graduated this spring with his Ph.D. from the Belfort group. He now works as a Research Scientist II, Bureau of Mobile Sources and Technology Development, Division of Air Resources, NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation. We wish him much luck and success.
  
  
• Mr. Masahide Taniguchi, masahide_taniguchi@nts.toray.co.jp, ex-visiting scientist in the Belfort group, is now a Senior Research Engineer in the Global Environment Research Labs., Toray Industries, Inc. in Otsu, Shiga, Japan. We wish him and his beautiful family luck and success. Hope that they visit again soon.
  
  
• Recently graduated with a BS in chemical engineering from RPI, ex-Undergraduate Research Student, Marc Woodka, will join CALTECH for his graduate studies in Chemical Engineering. His research in the Belfort group entitled "Recovery of valuable proteins from transgenic goat milk using expanded bed adsorption" will be taken over this summer by Eric Winkelmann winkee@rpi.edu. Graduate student, Gautam Lal Baruah co-directs this project.
  
  
• Dr. Pabarti Biswas, biswap@rpi.edu, theoretical chemist and molecular modeler, recently joined a collaborative research project, funded by an RPI initiative, between Drs. Shekhar Garde (Chemical Engineering), Saroj Nayak (Physics) and Georges Belfort. She came from the Chemistry Department at University of Pennsylvania and will model the cleavage reaction of the mini-intein using molecular modeling (Amber) and ab initio calculations (Wood et al. Biotechn Progr. (2000) 16, 1055-1063).
  
  
• Professor David Wood, dwood@princeton.edu, ex-Ph.D student from the Belfort Groups (Marlene Marlene.Belfort@wadsworth.org at the Wadsworth Center and Georges), has set up a biological engineering laboratory at Princeton University in the Chemical Engineering Department in which he is continuing the intein-related work funded by industry. We wish him and Rachel all the very best.
  
  
• Dr. Hanuman Mallubhotla, hanuman.mallubhotla@bms.com, ex-PhD student in the Belfort group, has taken a new position in Syracuse with Bristol Myers Squibb. We wish him and his new bride luck and success and hope that we will see him more often.
  
  
• Ex-Post Doc from the Belfort group, Professor Young Moo Lee, ymlee@hanyang.ac.kr Dept. of Industrial Chemistry, College of Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul Korea, will co-organize the next International Congress of Membranes to be held in Japan and Korea (á la World Cup Soccer in 2002), http://www.inchem.hanyang.ac.kr/lab/pml/eng/prof.html.
  
  
• Georges Belfort delivered a seminar summarizing his group's research at MIT in Bob Langer's group in Chemical Engineering on May 23, 2003.
  
  
• Ananth Sethuraman, Sethua@rpi.edu, and Georges Belfort, belfog@rpi.edu, participate in the Gordon Research Conference on "Proteins", June 22-27, 2003. Ananth presented a poster entitled "Substrate induced changes in protein structure: Effect of surface chemistry and protein crowding".
  
  

Grants

• A collaborative grant is being awarded to Dr. Georges Belfort (PI), Shekhar Garde, gardes@rpi.edu (Co-PI) (both of Chemical and Biological Engineering, RPI), Saroj Nayak, nayaks@rpi.edu (Co-PI) (Physics, RPI), and Vicky Derbyshire, Vicky.Derbyshire@wadsworth.org (Co-PI) and Marlene Belfort, belfort@wadsworth.org (Co-PI) (both from The Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health, Albany NY) by NSF as part of a new Nano-Initiative called NIRT entitled "Inteins as Nanoswitches for Biotechnology: Linking Molecular Modeling with Physical and Genetic Methods". The start date will be sometime this summer, 2003
  
  
• The Department of Energy, Basic Energy Sciences, has renewed a grant entitled "Interaction between proteins and polymeric surfaces", to start on July 1st, 2003. Dr. Ravi Kane kaner@rpi.edu, Professor of Chemical Engineering, is a co-investigator. The start date will be sometime this summer, 2003.
  
  
• A collaborative grant has been awarded to Dr. Chip Kilduff (PI) kilduff@rpi.edu and Georges Belfort (Co-PI) by EPA as part of a new Nano-Initiative entitled "Graft Polymerization as a route to control nanofiltration membrane surface properties to manage risk of EPA candidate contaminants and reduce NOM Fouling". The start date will be sometime this summer, 2003.
  
  

Some Nice News

• On Sunday, October 12, 2003, family and friends (including his colleague, Howard Littman rom Rensselaer) attended a public ceremony at the National Academies Building in Washington DC in which Georges Belfort was formally inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.
  
  
• On Sunday October 26, 2003, President Shirley Ann Jackson, Provost Bud Peterson, gave honor and recognition to Georges Belfort , among others, for his election to the National Academy of Engineering. Belfort also received a medal as part of his investiture of the Russell Sage Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering Endowed Chair to which he was named by the Board of Trustees, http://www.rpi.edu/web/News/press_releases/2003/honors.htm.