研究者紹介

Hall Damien Richard 　氏　名 Hall Damien Richard（ホール　デミエン　リチャード）
　所　属 医学医療系
　研究分野 バイオインフォアマティクス、サイエンスコミニュケーション
　課題名 表面吸着性向上によるウイルス感染防止、脂質膜における方向性のある拡散現象、アミロイド繊維の溶解機構
　研究室 http://www.md.tsukuba.ac.jp/younginit/damienhall/

My research is concerned with the biophysical study of important biochemical processes related to disease states. The three topics studied in my laboratory are (i.) amyloid formation and its molecular relationship to disease, (ii.) novel mechanisms for preventing viral adsorption/entry to/through the epithelial cell membrane, and  (iii.) protein diffusion in the cell cytosol and cell membrane and its relationship to cell/cell signaling. We use a combination of theoretical and experimental methods ranging from high level computing to basic molecular biology, cell biology and biochemical techniques. The advantage of this combined approach is that it allows the research questions to be tackled in greater depth and the experimental results generated to be subjected to greater rigor prior to publication. In this first six months (January 2008 – present) the research focus has been spread equally on all three topics with a book chapter on adsorption measurement and theory published by the Royal Society of Chemistry (1), a paper concerned with measurement of diffusion in the cell membrane (2) and a review (3) and paper (4) respectively concerned with the measurement and simulation of protein aggregation.

(1)  Hall, D. (2008) ‘Kinetic Models Describing Biomolecular Interactions at Surfaces.’ Chapter 4: Handbook of Surface Plasmon Resonance Eds. R. Schasfoort and A. Tudos. Royal Society of Chemistry. London, U.K.
(2) Hall, D. (2008) ‘Analysis and interpretation of two-dimensional single-particle tracking microscopy measurements: effect of local surface roughness.’ Analytical Biochemistry 377, 24-32.
(3)   Hall, D. (2008) ‘Protein Aggregation: Theory and Measurement’ (manuscript in preparation).
(4)   Hall, D., and Hirota, N. (2008) ‘Multi-scale modeling of amyloid growth from unfolded proteins using a set of ‘theory derived’ rate constants.’ (manuscript in preparation).