Regulation of Transcription by Synthesizing Peptide Mimics of Transcription Factor NF-KB

The NF-KB protein regulates genes important for apoptosis, immune response, and cell growth and differentiation. NF-KB mimics are peptides created in the lab that will hopefully act like the original NF-KB found naturally in the body. The aim of this project is to study the binding patterns of the NF-KB mimics and KB DNA. The binding and the structure of the NF-KB mimics will be studied using Circular dichroism (CD) and Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC) or Fluorescence spectroscopy. The CD will provide insight on the secondary structure of each of the NF-KB mimics prepared and the ITC or Fluorescence studies will determine how well each of the mimics bind the DNA, which is expressed through a binding constant, which in this case is the dissociation constant Kd .The purpose of studying the binding patterns is to ultimately work to prevent overexpression of proteins by the NF-KB transcription factor due to it causing undesired health issues. Research has been previously done on this topic which will provide data to compare what will be found from the studies being run in the future in order to continue to find which NF-KB mimic provides the best results. In addition to this portion of the project, a review article is in progress investigating which features allow beta sheets to bind with various versions of DNA