Sam-Yong Park
My group uses protein crystallography to study the structure and mechanism
of viral proteins and large, light-activated enzyme complexes.
I collaborate with several major groups in Japan on viral proteins
of medical importance, and more recently have begun studies of bacterial rhodopsins
to look at the fundamental details of light activation.
My publication list is available
here.
Following my PhD at Osaka University in the group of Prof. Hideki Morimoto,
I worked at both synchrotrons in Japan, PF and SPring-8,
before joining YCU in 2001. I am
the director in charge of teaching at the Graduate School in Tsurumi.
Influenza
My group solved the structure of several components of the influenza
RNA polymerase in order to help efforts to derive new drugs.
Pandemic influenza remains a world-wide risk, and current vaccines
and medications are unlikely to be of much use in preventing
large loss of life. The viral RNA polymerase carries out several essential
functions for viral replication
The crystal structure of the PA-PB1 complex can found at PDB here:
2ZNL.
The Nature paper describing the crystallographic analysis can be found via Pubmed
here.
Light-activating enzymes
My group has solved the structure of a novel cyclic ATPase that
is strongly activated by light.
The crystal structure
4YUS
shows that the dimeric protein has both a standard cAMPase structure,
connected to a BLUF (blue light activated flavin-binding) domain.
Details of the structure are described in a PNAS paper that can be found
here.
If you would like to contact me or my group, please find the
relevant information on the
Contact page.
Latest Updates
September, 2019: Our new post-doc Jin is arriving from Korea to continue work with GPCRs.