Dr Katy Wood

Phone: +61 2 9717 7100
Email: kathleen.wood@ansto.gov.au

Kathleen Wood performed her PhD in biophysics, focussing on specific labelling and protein dynamics using neutron scattering with Joe Zaccai (Institut Laue Langevin, Grenoble, France) and Dieter Oesterhelt (Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsreid, Germany). She also extended her thesis to include molecular dynamics simulations for comparison with neutron scattering data.

During her PhD she began to work on the dynamics of protein hydration water in collaboration with Martin Weik from the Institute of Structural Biology in Grenoble, which she continued in a short post-doctoral period in 2007.

In Kathleens second post-doctoral position, she moved to the study of intrinsically disordered proteins using NMR spectroscopy with Frans Mulder at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. She received a long-term fellowship from the European Molecular Biology Organisation for the work.

Her current research interests include the unfolded state of proteins, protein crowding, protein interactions and she maintains an active research program in protein dynamics.

Invited conference presentations

International Conference on Neutron Scattering Knoxville May 2009

Dynamics of soft matter Boston December 2008

American Crystallographic Association Annual Meeting Knoxville 2008

Third Japanese-French Seminar on Structural Dynamics of Proteins Grenoble 2007

Selected papers

Wood K, Frolich A, Paciaroni A, Moulin M, Hartlein M, Zaccai G, Tobias DJ & Weik M (2008) Coincidence of Dynamical Transitions in a Soluble Protein and Its Hydration Water: Direct Measurements by Neutron Scattering and MD Simulations. J Am Chem Soc, 130, 4586-4587

Wood K, Grudinin S, Kessler B, Weik M, Johnson M, Kneller GR, Oesterhelt D & Zaccai G (2008) Dynamical heterogeneity of specific amino acids in bacteriorhodopsin. J Mol Biol 380 581-591

Wood K, Caronna C, Fouquet P, Hauessler W, Natali F, Ollivier J, Orecchini A, Plazanet M & Zaccai G (2008) A benchmark for protein dynamics: Ribonuclease A measured by neutron scattering in a large wavevector-energy transfer range. Chem Phys 345 305314

Wood K, Lehnert U, Kessler B, Zaccai G & Oesterhelt D (2008) Hydration dependence of active core fluctuations in bacteriorhodopsin. Biophys J 95 194-202

Wood K, Plazanet M, Gabel F, Kessler B, Oesterhelt D, Tobias DJ, Zaccai G & Weik M (2007) Coupling of protein and solvent dynamics in biological membranes. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 104, 18049-18054

Full publication list at:
http://www.researcherid.com/rid/C-5864-2009