J. Timothy Sage Associate Professor PhD University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1986 (617)373-2908 jtsage@neu.edu

Research Summary:

Professor Sage's research is motivated by a fascination with the physical basis for the function of proteins. He develops and applies novel spectroscopic approaches to understand the structure, dynamics, and function of biological macromolecules. Infrared portein crystallography uses polarized infrared measurements on oriented protein crystals to identify reaction intermediates and refine the structure of protein active sites. A new synchrotron-based technique, nuclear resonance vibrational and reactive dynamics of iron in these complex molecules.

Recent Publications :

1. "Direct Determination of the Complete Set of Iron Normal Modes in a Porphyrin-Imidazole Model for Carbonmonoxy-Heme Proteins: [Fe(TTP)(CO)(1-MeIm)]", J.T. Sage, M.K. Ellison, A. Roth, W.R. Scheidt, W. Sturhahn, and E.El Alp, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 125, 6927-36 (2003).

2. "Iron Normal Mode Dynamics in (Nitrosyl)iron(II) tetraphenylporphyrin from X-ray Nuclear Resonance Data", B.K. Rai, S.M. Durbin, E.W. Prohofsky, J.T. Sage, G.R.A. Wyllie, W. R. Scheidt, W. Sturhahn, and E.E. Alp, Biophys. J. 82, 2951-2963 (2002).

3. "Nuclear Resonance Vibrational Spectroscopy of a Protein Active Site Mimic", J.T. Sage, C. Paxson, G.R.A. Wyllie, W. Sturhahn, S. M. Durbin, E.E. Alp, and W. R. Scheidt, J. Phy: Cond. Matt. 13, 7707-7722 (2001).

4. "Long-Range Reactive Dynamics in Myoglobin", J.T. Sage, S.M. Durbin, W. Sturhahn, D.C. Wharton, P.M. Champion, P. Hession, J. Sutter, and E.E. Alp, Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 4966-4969 (2001).

5. "Water Penetration and Binding to Ferric Myoglobin", W. Cao, J.F. Christian, P.M. Champion, F. Rosca, J.T. Sage, Biochemistry 40, 5728-5737 (2001).