Dr. Jane Clarke University of Cambridge, UK

Dr. Clarke completed a PhD and her postdoctoral training in protein NMR at the Medical Research Council Centre for Protein Engineering in Cambridge under the supervision of Professor Sir Alan Fersht. She joined the Chemistry Department in Cambridge in 1996 where she holds a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship. Dr.... read moreClarke's main interest is the study of protein folding - why a given amino acid sequence folds to a specific three-dimensional shape and how that is achieved in a matter of milliseconds to seconds. The emphasis of her research is on the folding of related proteins - what features of folding are conserved during evolution? She hopes to understand how sequence changes (mutations) affect the folding of proteins and leads to misfolding and disease. She uses a variety of biophysical techniques combined with protein engineering and computer simulations to address these questions.