Brian Kelch

@briankelch.bsky.social

795 Followers 241 Following

My lab at UMass Chan Medical School studies virus assembly and DNA replication/repair using structural biology, biophysics, and biochemistry. Habitual Line-Stepper. umassmed.edu/kelchlab

Meme describing types of headaches, with the most all encompassing headache being the stress of holding copious amounts of DNA in a phage head.
A) Image showing mutual antagonism between Copia and Arc. Arc is pro-plasticity, while Copia is inhibitory. B) Proposed mechanism for mutual antagonism, in which Arc and Copia capsids compete for RNA.
A) Images of Drosophila NMJ showing that Copia knockdown causes increased boutons. B&C) quantification of bouton increase
Image of the Copia hexamer, showing the pore in the center is ringed w postiviely charged residues.
A) images of Drosophila NMJs, showing presence of Copia protein at the NMJ. B) Negative stain EM micrograph of Copia capids. C) Structure of the Copia capsid. D) Structure of the dArc1 capsid (from the Briggs group).
Figure showing that the Alternate_collar state adopts an unanticipated conformation where a pore opens between the A and B subunits of the clamp loader.
Schematic illustrating that E.coli loader opens using a single pivot point, whereas yeast loader pivots at multiple points.
Comparison of the initial binding states of bacterial (this study) and eukaryotic (Gaubitz et al 2022) clamp loaders. The bacterial loader uses a different interface to initiate binding.