So Fast Special to SDSCwir e from the SDSC Quarterly Report . SDSCwire will host a series of articles on research conducted by SDSC researchers in the fields of biotechnology and biomedicine. Following is the third installment of these articles. The group of J. Andrew McCammon has just completed a move from the University of Houston to UCSD, where the researchers continue exploring problems in molecular recognition, binding, and reactivity.
AChE hydrolyzes the neurotransmitter acetylcholine to terminate synaptic transmission.
There is also practical interest in the use of inhibitors of AChE to manage Alzheimer's and other diseases. The AChE structure was solved in 1991 by Joel Sussman, Israel Silman, and colleagues at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel. The active site in the structure is positioned in a channel in the molecule that appears too narrow to process acetylcholine rapidly. Last year, McCammon's group used computational methods to find an adjunct site at the bottom of the channel that may open up to facilitate processing. The group has also simulated the diffusional approach of the substrate to the enzyme.