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Page 4rThe Battalion/Wednesday, November 27,1985
State and Local
Prof: Sti
1
By LAU
A&M prof experimenting with light producing bacterid
By BILL HUGHES
Reporter
The room is dark, except for a
liter of fluid glowing an eerie aqua
in a flask sitting atop a magnetic
stirring motor.
The fluid contains biolumines-
cent bacteria known as photobac
terium phosphorium, the marine
microorganisms responsible for
the light show.
“If we can learn what the pa
rameters are on the surface of the
enzyme, we have the beginnings of
an ability to design a reactor with
high efficiency for home lighting,”
says Dr. Tom Baldwin, associate
professor of biochemistry and bi
ophysics at Texas A&M.
After 14 years of working with
these light-emitting creatures,
Baldwin says he is still fascinated
by them.
“I’m far from becoming bored
with it,” he says of his work in bac
terial bioluminescence.
Baldwin’s interest in lumines
cent bacteria began in 1971 when
he was a graduate student working
in protein chemistry at the Univer
sity of Texas.
He attended a seminar on bacte
rial bioluminescence given by visit
ing professor Woody Hastings, got
hooked on the subject and began
reading about it at the library, he
says.
“I decided there was a lot of fer
tile ground there for further re
search,” Baldwin says.
When he began working, little
was being done in basic or applied
research with bioluminescent bac
teria.
Since then, researchers have
made new discoveries about the
chemical structure of the enzymes,
known as luciferases, which cat
alyze the light-emitting reaction.
The reaction is highly efficient,
with most of the energy going to
light production and little energy
being w'asted as heat.
The result is cold light, a light
bright enough to read by in a dark
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room, but not hot to the touch the
way an ordinary tungsten bulb
would be.
“As a result of the protein
chemistry that we’ve done with the
bacterial luciferase, we know a lot
about the structure of the enzy
me,” he says. "We know what we
can do to it and what we can’t do to
it.”
Baldwin primarily is interested
in how the enzyme folds to give an
active 3-D structure.
“All proteins, when they’re syn
thesized in the cell, are synthesized
starting from one end . . . it’s like a
chain that’s being made one link at
a time,” he says. “When the pro
tein is fully synthesized . . . it’s
properly folded and ready to go to
work.”
Doing the same thing in a test
tube isn’t quite as efficient. The
subunits of the protein can be sep
arated chemically, but when
they’re recombinea it takes about
three days to get full activity.
“There must be something
about how folding occurs in a cell
that is very different from the way
it occurs in a test tube,” Baldwin
says. “My feeling is that it must
have something to do with the or
der with which the subunits are
available to fold.”
Monitoring the results of the re
action within the cell is made eas
ier because the product of the en
zyme-catalyzed reaction leaves the
cell as light. Checking for enzyme
activity is as easy as looking for
light emission from a colony of
cells.
“The hope is . . . that since the
assay is so sensitive with respect to
the luciferase system, we might be
able to get an experimental handle
on the process of protein folding
inside the cell,” he says.
Baldwin says he believes that
whoever finds the key to protein
folding surely will be awarded the
Nobel Prize.
“Right now, it’s pie in the sky,
but I think we might be able to get
a handle on it,” Baldwin says.
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Photo by Bill Hogk
Dr. Tom Baldwin examines the enzymes known as “luciferases 1
He says protein folding le-
search is creative, but chancy.
Baldwin says he’s trying to get
enough information on the proc
ess to write a grant proposal.
“At this moment, the research
isn’t even sufficiently well-formu
lated enough to convince a grant
ing agency to give me the money
to do the work," he says. “You
have to show you know how to do
the things you want to accom
plish.”
A new microprocessor-con
trolled 2. r >()-liter fermentation unit
has helped Baldwin speed up the
researcn process because the unit
lets him grow the large quantities
of bacteria needed lor some of his
experiments.
In one day, the 250-liter
n process the sartie amounti
bac leria that it used to take Ifldt'
to do with a ll)-liier unit.
Baldwin's research is ba«
meaning it s research designed
expand the boundaries of to
edge without any specificapp|i
lions in mind.
Baldwin says that using«'
let uses .is molec ular tagsin jw
ol tadioactivc isotopes issaleny
mote efficient because the k-f
fetuses don't present the haflT
ol radioactive material, arettlffl
expensive to manufacture,addujl
easiei and < heaper to assayMfc:
isotopes.
Regents to discuss emergency loan eligibility changes
By MARYBETH ROHSNER
Stull Writer
A rules revision of Texas A&M’s
emergency tuition and fees loan pro
gram is one of the items on the
Board of Regents’ agenda for to
day’s meeting at 3 p.m.
The Regents will discuss the re
cent change in the eligibility require
ment for the emergency loan pro
gram to allow students on conduct
probation to be eligible for the fed
erally sponsored loans.
Currently students on conduct
probation are not considered eligible
for the program, but the U.S. De
partment of Education has ruled
that such students should be eligible.
The Regents also will vote on:
• Choice of a contractor for the
A. P. Beutel Health Center addition.
• Choice of a contractor for the
Veterinary Medicine Complex reno
vation.
• Acceptance of nearly $10 mil
lion in contributions to the Univer
sity for September 1984 to August
1985.
• Appropriations for the D
lence in the Humanities ami
Sciences program.
• Appropriations for the'-W
lence in Engineering program'- !'
• Proposing to establish a
for mathematics and sdencee®-
tion within the College®! EW
"TODAY, ABORTION IS SAFER THAN THE FILL. WE MUST R£
MEMBER WHAT IT WAS LIKE WHEN WOMEN HAD TO RESOtt
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Gloria Steinem, editor, Ms. Magazine
This Woman made abortion legal
for America. At the age of 26 Sarah
Weddington became the first
woman to address the Supreme
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V. Wade.
ISC GREAT ISSUES
presents
MS. SARAH WEDDINGTON
speaking on
ABORTION: WHO HAS THE FINAL SAY?
TUESDAY, DEC 3
8:00 PM
RUDDER THEATER
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