Jesse Zalatan is a graduate student in Dan Herschlag’s laboratory at Stanford. His thesis work addresses the question of how enzymes catalyze reactions with such enormous rate enhancements. He has approached this problem with structural and functional comparisons of two evolutionarily-related enzymes that catalyze different reactions. These comparisons have highlighted subtle structural features involved in providing both proficiency and specificity to enzyme-catalyzed reactions.
His long-term research interests involve understanding the underlying biochemical mechanisms that regulate the behavior of complex biological systems. He will begin a post-doctoral fellowship in the research group of Wendell Lim at UCSF in 2008.
