Question: What sort of chemicals are you creating currently to test on cells, and why would it be useful to know how cells respond to them?

Laura Newton answered on 16 Jun 2015:

Hey Rita!

The molecule that I am most interested in is called heme. You can see it’s structure here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heme#/media/File:Heme_b.svg

It binds to a protein (called Bach1) that can bind to DNA and change how one of our genes is expressed. This gene makes a protein called heme oxygenase-1. It’s an enzyme that breaks down heme. So if there is a lot of heme in the cell it will be detected by the protein Bach1 which will then tell the DNA to make more of the enzyme to break it down. It’s thought that this system goes wrong in a lot of diseases.

One of my projects is about trying to make some molecules that could bind to the Bach1 protein and make it better or worse at doing it’s job and I’ll test how it works in cells. That way we can learn more about how it controls heme oxygenase and hopefully even use them as a way of fixing it when it stops working properly.

To do this I’m going to base my molecules on the natural substrate – heme. I’m going to keep the central ring structure the same and try changing the side chains that come out of it, one at a time, to different things to see if they will still bind to Bach1 and if they change how Bach1 then binds to DNA.

Thanks for your question! Hope this answers it.
Laura