George Thurston - Featured Faculty 2017
George Thurston
College of Science
Dr. Thurston and his collaborators are focused on gaining a deeper understanding of the quantitative, physical nature of interactions among protein molecules and other biological macromolecules, about how these inter- actions affect the nature of their liquid solutions, and about the relationships of these interactions to normal and pathophysiology. Remarkably small changes in protein interactions can trigger phase transitions and other changes that underlie diseases including cataract, sickle-cell disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and dozens of others. To quantitatively understand the physics of the molecular interactions and kinetics that underly each of these diseases, new experimental and theoretical tools are needed in order to gain more re ned knowledge about the intermolecular forces, the probabilistic liquid and other structures, and the statistical thermodynamics of the concentrated mixtures of biological molecules that are relevant in each case.
Among RIT faculty collaborators, Dr. Thurston is working closely with Drs. David Ross and John Hamilton of the School of Mathematical Sciences, Drs. Lea Michel and Jeffrey Mills of the School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Drs. Michael Kotlarchyk, Moumita Das, and Scott Franklin of the School of Physics and Astronomy, and Dr. Greg Babbitt of the Gosnell School of Life Sciences. He also has many national and international collaborators.
One area of Dr. Thurston’s research is to develop new experimental methods. Dr. Thurston, Dr. Chris Wahle, Dr. Ross, and Dr. Carl Lutzer have developed and are continuing to refine the basis for using static light scattering to non-invasively measure the Gibbs free energy of mixing of ternary and quaternary liquid mixtures. Drs. Kotlarchyk and Thurston are developing the groundwork for combining neutron scattering and nuclear magnetic resonance instrumentation to enable more refined measurements of molecular and liquid structure. With collaborators in the U.S. and abroad, Dr. Thurston is adapting X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS) to measure dynamics of concentrated solutions of biological macromolecules at the length scale of molecular separations. In recent publications in this latter area, they have applied many techniques including XPCS, light scattering, X-ray scattering, computer simulation, and viscometry to characterize a glass transition in eye lens protein solutions, which could underlie the age-related condition of presbyopia.
Dr. Thurston and collaborators has focused on probing intermolecular interactions that are responsible for the normal transparency of the eye lens, which can also lead to enhanced light scattering in cataract disease, a leading cause of blindness. These investigations aim to develop general methods that will be applicable to other systems. In recent work, they have created quantitatively accurate, molecular-property based models for the liquid structure, thermodynamics, and light scattering of realistically concentrated mixtures of two of three major mammalian eye lens proteins. They are also developing a framework for understanding how the continually changing charge patterns of proteins and other biological macromolecules affect their phase transitions and other properties. In ongoing work, they are developing nuclear magnetic resonance tools to quantitatively probe intermolecular interactions in a fashion that can complement X-ray and neutron scattering. Finally, with Drs. Das, Franklin, Ross, and several students, they are working on the factors that influence whether the vitreous of the eye is in a gel or liquid state, conditions that are also thought to lead to blindness.
This work involves many disciplines within physics, including statistical physics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, and mechanics. The same is true for the relevant mathematics, chemistry, and biology. As Dr. Thurston is fond of saying, nature does not care how we have divided the disciplines. The electrons obey the laws of quantum mechanics even when they are in the living cell, a guiding principle that points to the truly vast universe within, about which we know relatively little.
George Thurston
Professor
RIT College of Science