Marc Ostermeier

Associate Professor

Office:  (410) 516-7144
Email: osterm@jhu.edu
Curriculum Vitae

Education

• Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin. 1996
• B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison. 1990

Research Interests

The complexity of biological systems arises from the web of relationships between biological macromolecules, metabolites and signaling molecules. Proteins whose function is modulated by other biological molecules (protein switches) are key components of this web. Creating artificial protein switches is an important goal of protein engineering. The major goals of our research program are (1) to create protein molecular switches through a combination of chemical and biological approaches that include molecular evolution and protein design, (2) to elucidate the mechanism of the switches created and (3) to develop switches for applications. For example, switches that establish connections between cellular components with no previous relationship can result in novel cellular circuitry and phenotypes. We envision, for example, that such switches might establish connections between molecular signatures of disease and functions that serve to treat the disease and therefore possess selective therapeutic properties.

Publications

• Liang, J., J. R. Kim, J. T. Boock, T. J. Mansell and M. Ostermeier. (2007) Ligand binding and allostery can emerge simultaneously. Protein Sci. 16, 929-937.
• S. Durai, A. D. Bosley, A. B. Abulencia, S. Chandrasegaran, and M. Ostermeier, (2006) A bacterial one-hybrid selection system for interrogating zinc finger-DNA interactions. Comb. Chem. High Throughput Screen. 9, 301-311.
• Paschon, D. E., Patel, Z. S. and Ostermeier, M. (2005) Enhanced catalytic efficiency of aminoglycoside phosphotransferase (3’)-IIa achieved through protein fragmentation and reassembly. J. Mol. Biol. 353, 26-37.
• Guntas, G., Mansell, T. J., Kim, J. R., and Ostermeier, M. (2005) Directed evolution of protein switches and their application to the creation of ligand-binding proteins. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 102, 11224-11229.
• Guntas, G., Mitchell, S.F. and Ostermeier, M. (2004) A molecular switch created by in vitro recombination of non-homologous genes. Chem. Biol. 11, 1483-1487.