A 2010 American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Raymond W. Sarber Award is being presented to Rachel J. Dutton, a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, for her work on disulfide bond formation. It is presented in honor of the late Raymond W. Sarber and his contributions to the growth and advancement of the ASM.
Dutton's work has focused on disulfide bonds which are covalent bonds between cysteine residues that aid in the stability and folding in many secreted proteins. She received her undergraduate degree at the University of California, San Diego and now is a graduate student. She has used genetic, bioinformatic, and phylogenetic methods to analyze pathways for disulfide bond formation across the bacterial tree of life. She has analyzed 400 bacterial genomes for homologs of the known disulfide bond formation pathway and watched for a bias of even numbers of cysteines in exported proteins. Her bioinformatic analysis formed her hypothesis that a large group of bacteria must have an alternative pathway for disulfide bond formation. She discovered that this alternative pathway utilizes a homolog of the warfarin (Coumadin)-sensitive blood coagulation enzyme from humans, vitamin K epoxide reductase (VKOR).
Dutton continued her work on the VKOR homologue of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and discovered that it replaced the normal E. coli counterpart. This discovery led to an assay of the protein's activity, showing that the mycobacterial enzyme is also sensitive to anti-coagulants, and subsequent collaborations with tuberculosis and blood coagulation laboratories, and a high throughput screening for inhibitors of the bacteria or anticoagulants.
The Raymond W. Sarber Award will be presented during the 110th General Meeting of the ASM, May 23-27, 2010 in San Diego, CA. ASM is the world's oldest and largest life science organization and has more than 43,000 members worldwide. ASM's mission is to advance the microbiological sciences and promote the use of scientific knowledge for improved health and economic and environmental well-being.