UCLA Chemistry & Biochemistry graduate student Dan McNamara (Yeates Lab) was named as one of the Audree Fowler Fellows in Protein Science.
Dan McNamara is a 5th year Biochemistry graduate student in Prof. Todd Yeates’ lab. Dan received his Bachelor’s of Science in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009. His undergraduate research in the laboratory of Dr. Matthew Redinbo contributed to the understanding of key enzymes which disseminate antibiotic resistance throughout bacterial populations. He then worked in Chapel Hill at a pharmaceutical start-up examining potential therapeutics in more pathogenically-relevant bacteria. Dan also recently had the opportunity to work as an intern at Genentech, Inc. investigating disease-related membrane protein structure and enzyme function.
Dan has been engaged in research on a variety of topics including bacterial microcompartments, protein design, methylotrophic biosynthetic pathways, and cancer-related targets and therapeutics. These studies rely on the determination and utilization of protein structures from X-ray crystallography to understand such systems and to create novel proteinaceous nanomaterials. A unifying theme in these diverse topics relates to protein assemblies and symmetry. His work completed thus far and current research underway focuses heavily on his main interest of protein structure in pathological contexts.
You can find more information about the students and their research by visiting the UCLA MBI announcement page.
