Mark Snider Presents Research at Prestigious Gordon Research Conference

Mark Snider

WOOSTER, Ohio - Mark Snider learned about the importance of sharing at an early age, and he continues to embrace that philosophy, even when it comes to complicated scientific information. An assistant professor of chemistry at The College of Wooster, Snider revealed the results of his recent research at the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Enzymes, Coenzymes and Metabolic Pathways, hosted by the University of New England last month in Biddeford, Maine.

"The GRC is the most prestigious of the conferences in the physical sciences and has a rich history of nurturing the frontiers of science," said Snider. "The scientists at this meeting were excited by the results of our work and provided great suggestions for subsequent experiments."

The "our" to which Snider referred was a team of undergraduate students at Wooster who have assisted him with his research over the past few years - research made possible by a grant from National Science Foundation, in collaboration with his colleagues Dean Fraga (associate professor of biology) and Paul Edmiston (associate professor of chemistry).

The title of Snider's presentation was "Dimerization enhances rate of product release in phosphagen kinase family." He and his students have been interested in discerning why some of the enzymes in the family of enzymes they study are dimers (a protein structure composed of two interacting subunits) while others are monomers (one subunit).

"We noticed that there appeared to be a pattern between the protein structures and the mechanisms of the reactions that these enzymes catalyze," said Snider. "Thus, we sought to test our hypothesis that protein oligomerization changed the rate-limiting step of these reactions. After learning of our results, the enzymologists attending the GRC wondered whether the enzymes they studied operated by a similar mechanism."

Snider's team of researchers included Ijeoma Eccles-James '05 and Juliana Anquandah '06, both of whom completed their Senior Independent Study Projects under his guidance. Also on the team were his most recent summer research assistants, James Graham '08 and Luke Stetzik '09. "Our findings also indicate a novel functional role for negative cooperativity in ligand binding, in that the binding of ligand in one subunit prevents the adjacent subunit from binding ligand," said Snider.

Now in its 75th year, the GRC encourages scientists to "engage in critical and unrestrained debate of the latest research results." Named in honor of Neil Elbridge Gordon, who sought "a more intimate conference atmosphere to stimulate unfettered scientific discussion, the conferences have an impressive pedigree. For example, Enrico Fermi described the slow-neutron process of atomic disintegration at a Gordon Conference in 1936, nine years before the first atomic bomb was detonated. Also, in 1973, the implications of recombinant DNA technology were discussed at a Gordon Conference, a decade before it was introduced to the legal system.

The GRC intentionally keeps attendance to a minimum by issuing personal invitations. This facilitates personal conversation and interaction between participants. The recent conference drew 130 of the world's preeminent enzymologists.