Ph.D., University of California, San Francisco, 1973-77. A.B., State University of New York, College at Fredonia, 1969-73, in Biology and Chemistry Research Research projects underway in the Marletta laboratory are focused at the interface of chemistry and biology. The underlying theme is that molecular characterizations of biological problems will uncover fundamentally new mechanisms of chemical control in biology that can ultimately be brought to bear on human health and disease. Protein structure and function relationships especially with regard to catalysis are a dominant theme of current research.
Molecular oxygen is also a co-substrate in the reaction.
The overall enzymatic mechanism leading to oNO formation is complicated and significant unresolved questions remain. Our studies have involved various aspects of structure and catalysis and future investigations will continue to explore these areas. This class of proteins found in Plasmodium falciparum, the causative agent in malaria, are thought to be involved in the polymerization of heme, a vital step in the parasite's metabolism while in the human host. We have also initiated a new project to study the effect of NO on pathogenic prokaryotic metalloproteins, using the diphtheria toxin repressor protein as an example. Nothing is known, however, about the mechanistic details of this complex reaction.