Faculty Advisor: Dr. Brian Volkman E-mail: jwieting@mcw.edu Phone: (414) 955-8081
Research Area
Chemokine biology is a rapidly developing field and is vastly important for understanding cell migration and activation in immune responses. The goal of my research is to look at both the structure and function of the chemokine lymphotactin. Unique among the chemokine family, lymphotactin has some interesting structural characteristics. We believe that this "uniqueness" of lymphotactin lends this chemokine some special functional properties that have yet to be determined. Throughout the course of my research I will be using NMR to study the structural nature of lymphotactin as it binds to CD4. I will also be conducting many cellular based assays to study the function of lymphotactin and elucidate the role of this chemokine in the immune system.