Welcome
The Beuning laboratory at Northeastern is focused on understanding the structure-function-dynamics relationships of proteins and enzymes, with a particular focus on proteins involved in DNA metabolism and DNA damage tolerance.
The research in the Beuning laboratory encompasses the following major areas:
We aim to determine how cells respond to DNA damage and maintain the accuracy of genetic information, by studying the specificity of DNA-damage bypass Y-family DNA polymerases, by probing interactions between DNA replication and DNA damage tolerance, and by determining the genes responsible for tolerance to specific DNA damaging agents.
We also seek to determine fundamental aspects of enzyme function that can be applied to protein engineering. This work, in collaboration with the Ondrechen laboratory, probes the roles of residues remote from the active site in enzyme function. This work focuses on a wide range of enzymes, from DNA polymerases to enzymes involved in the urea cycle and sugar metabolism. A second goal of this project is to determine the functions of enzymes of unknown function from structural genomics projects.
