Information for prospective lab members:
We are looking for students from any science major or minor as long as you have in interest in biochemistry. Students take part in every aspect of research. You will work on designing, carrying out and interpreting experiments. You will also present your work at conferences.
Here are our current projects:
1) Nitrogenase: Nitrogenase is a vital enzyme in nature as it is the only enzyme that converts nitrogen gas into ammonia. Ammonia is a plant nutrient since it is a building block to make proteins and DNA. However, nitrogenase is very easily inactivated by common atmospheric gases such as carbon monoxide and oxygen. This project determines the biochemical mechanisms by which bacteria prevent nitrogenase from being inactivated.
2) Protein engineering: It is possible to alter the properties of naturally occurring proteins so they gain new activity. Although there have been troves of research on enzyme engineering, many important questions remain unanswered. Surprisingly, we don’t actually know all the structural reasons why enzymatically catalyzed reactions display the temperature dependence that they do. Knowing this is vital for enzyme engineering. Our group is interested determining how an enzyme’s activity at a specific temperature is related to its flexibility. We also want to figure out how altering flexible regions of a protein enables us to change the temperature-dependence of enzymes.
3) Enzymes for food science: This project is the practical implementation of project 2 as we aim to make a “superenzyme” for food processing applications. This project is done in collaboration with the Were lab in the Food Science department and there are opportunities to work in either group.
For additional information, including research expectations and current openings, please see the faculty research directory:
https://chapman0.sharepoint.com/sites/directory/SitePages/Dr.-Cedric-Owens(2).aspx
Please email me at cpowens@chapman.edu if you are interested in joining our group or stop by Keck 245.
Information for current lab members:
Please sign up for BCHM491. The forms can be found here:
https://www.chapman.edu/research/center-for-undergraduate-excellence/research-creative-course.aspx
BCHM491 is organized by the CUE. You will be asked to submit a weekly excel sheet to the CUE in which you very briefly describe what you did that week and what you plant to do next week. The amount of info required each week is short so it’s not much of an extra burden and a good way to keep track of your hours.
Sign up for 1 credit for 3-4 hours of research per week, 2 credits for 6-8 hours per week and 3 credits for 9-12 hours. You will choose the P/NP option since the graded option is no longer offered by the biochemistry department.
As part of the application, you will have to write a brief summary of your planned work. I would like to read this section before you submit the BCHM491 application so please have it ready by the end of the first week of class.
The summary should contain the following:
-Brief broad intro into the project.
-Specific intro that leads to the research objective and/or hypothesis.
-Predicted outcome.