If you didn’t get a chance to tune into this weeks interview, be sure to download this pod cast!
It was my pleasure to interview Dr. Robert J. Woods!
Education.
Dr. Woods received his B.Sc. (Honors) in Engineering Chemistry in 1985 and his Ph.D. in 1990 in Computational and Synthetic Carbohydrate Chemistry, both from Queen's University in Kingston, Canada.
Check out this link to the CCRC for more info on Dr. Woods … http://glycam.ccrc.uga.edu/users/rwoods/
Research Initiatives.
Dr. Wood’s research examines the relationships between the conformations of carbohydrate molecules and biological recognition and activity, particularly the mechanisms involved in carbohydrate recognition in immunological events. Significant alterations in the biological activities of peptides and proteins often accompany the covalent attachment of an oligosaccharide (glycosylation) to one or more of their amino acid residues. Approximately 60% of all mammalian proteins are glycosylated, and the glycoprotein’s that are generated by glycosylation are also frequently found attached to the cell surfaces of bacteria, fungi, and parasites. Glycomics of Glycosaminoglycan expression in the C elegans model organism (ccrc website)
During the interview we cover Dr. Woods` development of the GLYCAM and AMBER computational models. As we learned in the interview the extreme variability to carbohydrate patterns is one of the major hurdles within the science today. Dr. Woods and his team are working to map these patterns and “crack the Code”.
Be sure to listen to the interview of Dr. Woods, You will be nothing short of amazed by his research and progress. The potential is amazing!!
Here are a few links of interest or Dr. Woods.
http://glycam.ccrc.uga.edu/glycam_research.html
http://glycam.ccrc.uga.edu/users/rwoods/publications.html
http://www.bmb.uga.edu/home/undergraduate/research_opps/projects.htm
http://www.platform.com/Products/platform-mpi/scali-university-georgia.pdf
