FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (8/05)
Contact: Lynn Stewart or Kelsey Johnson, Centenary News Service, 318-841-7265

Centenary and LSU Health Sciences Center Professors Receive Funding for Phosphoproteomics Research

	Dr. Cynthia Brame

SHREVEPORT, LA — Dr. Cynthia Brame, assistant professor of biology at Centenary, and Dr. Lucy Robinson, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, are receiving funding from the Louisiana Board of Regents for phosphoproteomics research.

Dr. Brame and Dr. Robinson, co-writers of the grant proposal, initiated their project in the summer of 2004. The project involves using a phosphoproteomics approach to determine substrates of yeast casein kinase 1, an essential enzyme that is conserved from yeast to humans. If successful, the project will identify substrates of this enzyme and will validate a method that has the potential to be useful in many areas of biology.

The Louisiana Board of Regents, a state agency that coordinates all public higher education in Louisiana, has approved support of this project for two years, providing funds in the amount of $66,920.

Along with Dr. Brame’s and Dr. Robinson’s efforts, several students have been contributing to the project. Centenary senior Beth Allen of Bossier City completed a biology honors project related to this work last year, and senior Shelly Kearney of Baton Rouge has been working on the project over the past few months and plans to continue throughout the school year. Two students from LSU-Shreveport have also contributed to this research: Olga Willett, who resides in Greenwood, La. and Eric Fontenot of Lake Charles.

Originally from western Kentucky, Dr. Brame has taught at Centenary for two years, instructing classes in cell biology and genetics. Her research focuses on developing and applying mass spectrometric tools to characterize protein post-translational modifications, chemical modifications of proteins that regulate their function. Dr. Brame earned her bachelor’s in biochemistry/molecular biology from Centre College and her Ph.D. in pharmacology from Vanderbilt University. She did a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Virginia, where she specialized in biological mass spectrometry and proteomics.

Dr. Robinson, originally from Maryland, obtained a Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 and moved to the LSU Health Sciences Center Department of Biochemistry in 1993 after a post-doctoral fellowship in genetics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her research has focused on the lipid modification, subcellular trafficking and biological functions of an essential pair of casein kinase 1 protein kinases in yeast, Yck1 and Yck2.

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