Our lab is interested in the functional importance of membrane protein dynamics. Membrane proteins are active molecules that perform many important tasks relaying signals and molecules across membrane barriers. To fully understand the function of these proteins, not only the structure, but the timescale, amplitude, and directionality of structural changes must be determined.

Our primary tool in these studies is nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. NMR offers a unique tool to study protein dynamics, since kinetic data is measured simultaneously with the chemical shift, a direct manifestation of atomic-resolution structure. By coupling this data with traditional substrate binding and transport assays, we can determine the functional role of the protein motions we observe in our studies of multidrug resistance transporters