Membrane Structural Biology: With Biochemical and Biophysical Foundations

Description

This textbook provides a strong foundation and a clear overview for students of membrane biology and an invaluable synthesis of cutting-edge research for working scientists. The text retains its clear and engaging style, providing a solid background in membrane biochemistry, while also incorporating the approaches of biophysics, genetics and cell biology to investigations of membrane structure, function and biogenesis to provide a unique overview of this fast-moving field. A wealth of new high resolution structures of membrane proteins are presented, including the Na/K pump and a receptor-G protein complex, offering exciting insights into how they function. All key tools of current membrane research are described, including detergents and model systems, bioinformatics, protein-folding methodology, crystallography and diffraction, and molecular modeling. This comprehensive and up-to-date text, emphasising the correlations between membrane research and human health, provides a solid foundation for all those working in this field.

Mary Luckey is Professor Emerita in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at San Francisco State University. She earned her PhD in Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley with the first identification of an iron transport protein in the bacterial outer membrane. Her postdoctoral work demonstrated the specificity of the E. coli maltoporin in proteoliposomes. While continuing research on maltoporin structure and function, she has taught biochemistry for over 25 years, including the graduate-level membrane biochemistry course that provided the impetus for this book.