Research of the Nanomedicine Center for Nucleoprotein Machines may someday radically change the treatment for diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. New therapies that could result from the Center's work would address the underlying genetic causes of diseases by directly modifying the information contained in DNA and RNA.

With these long-term goals in mind, the Center's researchers are working to understand how the body's cells use combinations of proteins called “protein machines' to repair damaged DNA within a cell's nucleus. To meet this challenge, researchers must first develop tools and technologies that allow them to visualize single events in the nuclei of living cells - a capability far beyond the limits of existing technology

DNA damage repair is vitally important to human health because both normal metabolic activities and environmental factors can cause DNA damage. These effects result in as many as 100,000 individual molecular lesions per cell per day. If allowed to accumulate without repair, these lesions interfere with gene transcription and replication, leading to premature aging, apoptosis (cell death), or unregulated cell division.

Within the Center, a team of biologists, engineers, chemists and computational specialists are working to develop:

• Small biocompatible fluorescent probes less than 5 nanometers in size (a single nanometer is about 1/100,000th the width of a human hair)
• Strategies to attach these probes to individual components of a nucleoprotein machine
• Super-resolution imaging technologies to examine these probes in living cells
• Tools to interpret and quantify the resulting images and ways to describe the composition and behavior of nucleoprotein machines in engineering terms 

Worth noting: With the October 2006 announcement of the NIH’s investment in the Nanomedicine Center for Nucleoprotein Machines, Georgia became only the second state to have three NIH nanomedicine centers.

Institutions involved: Three GRA institutions - Georgia Tech, Emory and the Medical College of Georgia - are active partners in the Center. Other partners include New York University, MIT, California Institute of Technology, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and German Cancer Research Center.

Research focus: The center's initial research focuses on the nucleoprotein machine that repairs breaks in DNA double strands via the non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) pathway. Researchers will work to determine:

• How fast the nucleoprotein machine runs (kinetics)
• How accurately it works (accuracy/sensitivity)
• How quickly it changes its form/shape for different tasks (robustness)
• How well it is controlled (feedback/control)

GRA investment: GRA Eminent Scholar William Dynan (Medical College of Georgia) serves as associate director of the center; GRA has committed to investing some $3 million in the center's core facilities.

External funding: The center was awarded $8 million from the National Institutes of Health through 2011.

Web site: http://www.nucleoproteinmachines.org/