Karin Crowhurst
Professor

Brief Biography

I grew up in western Canada (Calgary and Vancouver) but traveled east to pursue university. I received Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Chemistry before entering the field of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto where I completed a PhD in Biochemistry and Biomolecular Structure in the Forman-Kay lab. In 2003 I moved to Los Angeles to join the Mayo lab at Caltech for my postdoc. I started as a tenure-track faculty member at CSUN in 2007.

My research: in vitro and in-cell investigation of the acid-stress chaperone HdeA.
The stomach is an important barricade that helps to kill many bacteria before they can cause illness, in part by using its acidity to inactivate bacterial proteins. Some bacteria contain a small chaperone protein called HdeA that helps protect other proteins from becoming permanently inactivated and therefore helps bacteria survive and cause infection. Biophysical studies have provided clues that HdeA unfolds below pH 3.0 and interacts with its binding partners via hydrophobic interactions. However, there is a lack of data that monitors, in detail, the mechanism of unfolding, activation and interactions with client proteins. The insight we gain may aid future development of vaccines or therapeutics that combat dysentery.

Students joining the lab have the opportunity to expand their understanding of the mechanism and biophysical properties of proteins the molecular level.

Research 

Structural Biology Biophysics

Connections