Current projects:

Trainee projects in the Bell lab will focus on understanding the structure and mechanism of DNA repair proteins using x-ray crystallography and other biochemical and biophysical tools. A particular area of emphasis is on viral recombination proteins involved in the single strand annealing pathway.

Five Recent Publications:

• Galkin, V.E., Yu, X., Bielnicki, J., Ndonka, D., Bell, C.E., and Egelman, E.H. (2009) Cleavage of bacteriophage lambda cI repressor involves the RecA C-terminal domain. J. Mol. Biol. 385, 779-787.
• Gopishetty, B., Zhu, J., Rajan, R., Sobczak, A.J., Wnuk, S.F., Bell, C.E., and Pei, D. (2009) Probing the catalytic mechanism of S-ribosylhomocysteinase (LuxS) with catalytic intermediates and substrate analogues. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 131, 1243-1250.
•  Zhang, J., Xing, X., Herr, A.B., and Bell, C.E. (2009) Crystal structure of E. coli RecE protein reveals a toroidal tetramer for processing double-stranded DNA breaks. Structure 17, 690-702.
• Zhang, J., McCabe, K., Bell, C.E. (2011) Crystal structures of l exonuclease in complex with DNA suggest an electrostatic ratchet mechanism for processivity. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 108, 11872-11877.
• Zhang, Y., Zhang, J., Yuan, C., Hard, R.L., Park, I.-H., Li, C., Bell, C., and Pei, D. Simultaneous binding of two peptidyl ligands by a Src homology 2 domain. Biochemistry 50, 7637-7646.

Publications at PubMed