Scholar Profile

Stephen L. Mayo

Professor
Howard Hughes Medical Institute & California Institute of Technology
California Institute of Technology
Voice: 626-395-6408
Fax: 626-568-0934
Email: steve@mayo.caltech.edu
Personal Homepage
1994 Searle Scholar

Research Interests

Protein Structure, Stability and Design

The intellectual focus of our laboratory is to further elucidate the intimate details of protein structure and stability and to use this knowledge to design, build and test proteins with novel biochemical properties.
The question of how linear amino acid sequence information leads to discrete, complex three-dimensional protein structures remains as one of the greatest unsolved problems in chemistry and biology. In addition to expanding our knowledge of the chemistry of life, a solution to the protein folding problem will have an enormous impact on the pursuits of both medical and industrial biotechnology. Since proteins are essentially molecular machines, the ability to predict protein structure from amino acid sequence information will push us towards a true nanotechnology. It is this point that motivates our efforts. To this end, we have established research programs in the areas of protein structure, stability and design.