Christopher Berndsen, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Biochemistry and Enzymology
Year Started at JMU: 2012
berndsce@jmu.edu
Contact Info
Website: https://ceberndsen.github.io/
Research Description
I am interested in the mechanism and structure of proteins that degrade starch in plants and modify other proteins with the signaling protein, Ufm1. The undergraduates in the Berndsen Lab have developed enzyme assays, used small-angle X-ray scattering and crystallography to look at structure, and measured enzyme rates to understand how these proteins work. We also harness the power of course-based research projects to explore biomolecule structure/function.
Education
- PhD in Biomolecular Chemistry, 2008, University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI
- BS in Biochemistry, 2003, Roanoke College, Salem, VA
Select Publications
- Chandrasekharan, N. P., Ravenburg, C. M., Roy, I. R., Monroe, J. D., and Berndsen, C. E. (2019, August 30) Solution structure and assembly of β-amylase 2 from Arabidopsis thaliana. bioRxiv.
- Roy, I. R., Sutton, C. K., and Berndsen, C. E. (2019) Resilience of BST-2/Tetherin structure to single amino acid substitutions. PeerJ 7, e7043.
- Hossain, R. A., Dunham, N. R., Enke, R. A., and Berndsen, C. E. (2018) In silico modeling of epigenetic-induced changes in photoreceptor cis-regulatory elements. Mol. Vis. 24, 218–230.
Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry
