Nathaniel Wesley successfully defended his thesis on August 17th, 2022, titled, “Characterization of Chromatin Interactions using TR-FRET.” The work was completed under the direction of Robert K. McGinty, MD, PhD.
Nathaniel completed a Bachelor of Science with Research Distinction in Biochemistry at The Ohio State University where he worked with Dr. James A. Cowan in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Their research focused on characterization of disease mutations in a mitochondrial protein called NFU1 which is involved in iron-sulfur cluster biogenesis. They concluded that impaired iron-sulfur cluster binding and transfer, as well as altered protein stability contribute to rare mitochondrial disease phenotypes.
In 2017, Nathaniel joined UNC via the Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program and entered the Molecular and Cellular Biophysics Training Program. After three rotations focused on structural biology methods, he decided to join the cryoEM “resolution revolution” with the McGinty lab. Nathaniel applied cryoEM to study the structure of epigenetic regulatory proteins in complex with the nucleosome and developed robust in vitro fluorescence-based methods to quantitatively characterize these interactions.
Awards
Nathaniel Wesley was supported by an NSF GRFP Award. The title of his project was “Understanding the Structural and Functional Basis of Gαi1 pH Sensing.” Special thanks go out to Professor Sharon Campbell PhD and postdoctoral researcher Guowei Yin PhD for help with the NSF application.
Publications
- Wesley NA, Skrajna A, Simmons HC, Budziszewski GR, Azzam DN, Cesmat AP, and McGinty RK. “TR-FRET Platform for Quantitative Nucleosome Binding and Footprinting”, Protein Science, 31(6):e4339, 2022.
- Wesley, N.*, Wachnowsky, C.*, et al. “Understanding the Molecular Basis for Multiple Mitochondrial Dysfunctions Syndrome 1 (MMDS1): Impact of a Disease-Causing Gly208Cys Substitution on Structure and Activity of NFU1 in the Fe/S Cluster Biosynthetic Pathway”. Journal of Molecular Biology. 2017. doi: 10.1016/j.jmb.2017.01.021. (* denotes co-first authors).
- Wesley, N.*, Wachnowsky, C.* et al. “Analysis of NFU-1 metallocofactor binding-site substitutions – impacts on iron-sulfur cluster coordination and protein structure and function”. FEBS Journal. 2017. doi: 10.1111/febs.14270. (* denotes co-first authors).
- Wesley, N., et al. “Understanding the molecular basis for multiple mitochondrial dysfunctions syndrome 1 (MMDS1): impact of a disease-causing Gly189Arg substitution on NFU1”. FEBS Journal. 2017. doi: 10.1111/febs.14271.
- Wachnowsky, C., Wesley, N., et al. “Understanding the Mechanism of [4Fe-4S] Cluster Assembly on Eukaryotic Mitochondrial and Cytosolic Aconitase”. Inorganic Chemistry. 2019. doi: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.9b01278
Link to all publications: NA Wesley
Nathaniel plans to remain in the Research Triangle area and pursue a position in the biotechnology industry.