Jonathan Lees Email & Phone Number

Rockville, MD

• Purified hundreds of milligrams of proteins for therapeutic studies from plant leaves and Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells.
• Butyrylcholinesterase and acetylcholinesterase protein to counteract organophosphates
• IgG antibodies to prevent human immunodeficiency virus transmission

Rockville, MD

• Optimized the purification of a mycobacteriophage by ion-exchange chromatography to remove molecular components that would disrupt a Mycobacterium tuberculosis detection assay.

• Discovered that the mitochondrial protein Fis1 homodimerizes.
• Determined the dimer topology using spectroscopic techniques.
• Engineered variants using site-directed mutagenesis that disrupt or enhance Fis1 dimerization.
• Applied a kinetic model to describe the dimerization of Fis1.
• Found that yeast cannot respire with the Fis1 mutations suggesting that an interconversion between monomer and dimer is necessary for function.

• Showed that two small molecules, nizatidine and pyridoxine, do not interact using isothermal titration calorimetry contrary to a previous computational prediction.

• Sequenced the signal sequence of the frog myelin protein zero.
• Found a carbohydrate moiety on the zebrafish myelin protein zero.
• Created a human myelin protein zero variant that causes a known packing defect and optimized purification of the variant.

Doctor Of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Biology

Bachelor Of Arts (B.A.), Chemistry With A Concentration In Biochemistry

Education record