9:53 a.m., Nov. 19, 2008----Roberta Colman, Willis Harrington Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Delaware, is co-author of the 12th most-cited paper of the year in Biochemistry, a top-ranked journal of the American Chemical Society. She and her colleagues are in good company--recent Nobel laureate Roger Tsien has the 6th most-cited article in the same journal.

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Colman's co-authors on the paper include former graduate student Luis Ralat, who is now a post-doctoral researcher at the Ben May Institute for Cancer Research in Chicago, as well as Yefim Manevich and Aron Fisher from University of Pennsylvania Medical Center.

The paper provides direct evidence for the formation of a complex between two proteins, glutathione S-transferase (GST) and 1-cysteine peroxiredoxin, with activity changes in both enzymes. GST is ubiquitous in nature and is known to play a detoxifying role in the human body by coupling the tripeptide glutathione to xenobiotics, or foreign chemicals. Colman explains that these foreign substances tend to be insoluble and difficult to remove from the body, but once coupled with glutathione, they become more water-soluble and are able to be excreted.

It has also been postulated that GST forms complexes with other proteins in the cell. For example, GST enables 1-cysteine peroxiredoxin, a detoxifying enzyme that normally dies out after one reaction, to be regenerated so it can go through multiple reaction cycles. This is a new role for GST.

While a number of research groups have studied such protein-protein interactions indirectly, Colman and her colleagues were the first to isolate and characterize the complex of GST and 1-cysteine peroxiredoxin. Now her research group and others are seeking to determine whether GST can interact with and affect other proteins.

“Protein-protein interactions play a role in virtually all processes in living cells,” Colman says. “Gaining new insights into these interactions will improve our understanding of disease and contribute to the development of new chemo-therapeutic approaches.”

A graduate of Radcliffe College, Colman received her doctorate from Radcliffe Graduate School of Harvard University. She served on the faculty of Washington University School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School before joining the UD faculty in 1973.

Colman is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and she has received a number of honors and awards, including UD's Francis Alison Award, the Herbert A. Sober Award of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and UD's College of Arts and Sciences Scholar Award.

Article by Diane Kukich