Organization
University of California San Francisco
Profile
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Telephone(415) 514-4179
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Address(s)Robert Stroud
Mission Bay Campus, MC 2240- Genentech Hall Room S412A
600 16th Street
San-Francisco, CA 94158-2517
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Biography
Robert M. Stroud obtained his B.A., and M.A., in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge and his Ph.D., from the University of London, where he made early applications of non-centrosymmetric direct methods in crystallography in a thesis entitled, “Structure of Biologically Active Molecules”. His postdoctoral training was with Richard Dickerson at Caltech where he determined the first structures for the serine protease trypsin and its precursor trypsinogen. He held both assistant and associate professorships in the Department of Chemistry at Caltech. In 1977, he joined the University of California, San Francisco faculty, where he remains Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics. He is Director of the Membrane Protein Expression Center, and of the Center for Structure of Membrane Proteins.
Dr. Stroud focuses upon understanding function at the atomic level, and at the levels of macromolecular organization. He has a major commitment to understanding the structure and function of classes of integral membrane proteins. In enzymology, he focused on the structural basis for mechanisms, and on discovery of new principles for drug discovery aimed at enzymes and proteins. These include trypsin and serine proteases, thymidylate synthase, HIV protease, and HIV integrase. He currently studies specificity and mechanism of enzymes that modify RNA, particularly pseudo-uridine synthases, and RNA methylases. He also works with Peter Walter on the process of recognition of unfolded proteins inside the endoplasmic reticulum via the unfolded protein response, and the method of targeting membrane proteins to and through the translocating pore in the membrane.
Dr. Stroud is the 2009 winner of the Hans Neurath Award of the Protein Society, and the 2009 winner of the Anatrace Award of the Biohysical Society. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine (United Kingdom).
Dr. Stroud’s lab, as part of the BioXFEL Center will focus its research effort in the structure of membrane proteins, particularly channels. Dr. Stroud’s Lab has solved fundamental structural relationships related to ammonia and glycerol channels. The capacity to use nanocrystals in the future will dramatically increase productivity at the Center and for the Stroud lab.
