Biophysical Society Newsletter - July 2015

10

BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER

2015

JULY

Biophysical Journal Know the Editors William R. Kobertz

begun to dissect how the individual KCNE1 glycosylation sites affect assembly, trafficking, and function in ventricular cardiomyocytes. Lastly, we have been moonlighting as spectrosco- pists—developing a chemical biology approach to fluorescently visualize ion efflux. The develop- ment of this technology was inspired, in part, because I was envious of all the amazing small molecule and genetically encodable sensors avail- able for intracellular calcium. We plan to present our data at the 60th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting in Los Angeles. Hopefully the paparazzi will leave us alone so we can enjoy the meeting!

University of Massachusetts Editor for the Channels and Transporters Section

William Kobertz

Q: What is your area of research?

In my laboratory we study the assembly, traffick- ing, function, and structure of potassium chan- nel complexes. Although a canonical potassium conducting subunit possesses the rudimentary machinery to generate an electrical signal, cells have evolved membrane-embedded partner proteins that associate with and fine-tune the electrical currents of ion channels to achieve the appropriate physiological function for a particular cell. The rhythmicity of the heartbeat, mainte- nance of arterial tone, and insulin release by cells in the pancreas are all physiological processes that require a healthy association between ion channel and partner protein. As a PhD-trained organic chemist with post- doctoral training in ion channel biophysics and N-glycosylation, my laboratory and I have the most fun when we design novel chemical tools, probes, or reagents to interrogate glycosylated ion channel complexes. Currently, in my laboratory we are determining what makes a good (or bad) N-linked glycosylation site in membrane pro- teins and how the two oligosaccharyltransferase isoforms (STT3A and STT3B) handle different N-linked consensus sites. Because mutations that prevent N- or O-glycosylation of the membrane- embedded KCNE1 potassium channel regulatory subunit give rise to cardiac arrhythmias, we have

Highlights from BJ

July 7 issue (109/1) Be sure to check out these articles in the latest issue of Biophysical Journal: Simple and Robust Dual Color 3D Super-Resolution Microscopy by Combined Spectral-Demixing and Bi-plane Imaging Christian Winterflood , Evgenia Platonova , David Albrecht , Helge Ewers Conformational State Transitions in the Glycine- bBound GluN1 NMDA Receptor Ligand Binding Domain via Single-Molecule Förster Resonance Energy Transfer David Cooper , Drew Dolino , Henriette Jaurich , Bo Shuang , Swarna Ramaswamy , Caitlin Nurik , Jixin Chen , Vasanthi Jayaraman , Christy Landes Cholesterol Modulates CFTR Confinement in the Plasma Membrane of Primary Epithelial Cells Asmahan Abu-Arish , Elvis Pandzic , Julie Goepp , Elizabeth Matthes , John Hanrahan , Paul Wiseman