| The goal of this thesis is to understand the fundamental molecular motions responsible for calcium pumping and regulation in skeletal and cardiac sarcoplasmic reticulum. My approach to this problem utilizes a wide range of techniques, including protein chemistry and enzyme kinetics, but my forte is site-directed spectroscopic probes. After attaching phosphorescent probes to the Ca-ATPase, the integral membrane protein responsible for active transport of calcium, I performed time-resolved anisotropy measurements to monitor directly the molecular motion of the protein. Previous studies on this system used erythrosin 5... |
