Bob Duda's Photo

Name: Robert L. Duda, Ph.D
(retired Research Assistant Professor)
Position: Consultant in James Conway's lab
Institution: University of Pittsburgh
Department of Structural Biology
Email:
Laboratory Address: Biomedical Science Tower 3, Room 2054
Department of Structural Biology
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Pittsburgh PA 15213

Bob Duda is studying the structrure and assembly of the capsids of bacteriophage HK97 and several other phages. This work continues the NIH-funded research that began in the Department of Biological Sciences in collaboration with Distinguished Professor Roger Hendrix, who passed away unexpectedly in August, 2017.
Bob's current work is funded by a NIH grant to James F. Conway

R01 GM144981 Structure and assembly of dsDNA tailed bacteriophages.


James Conway's Laboratory members include: Dr. Alexis Huet, Anna Belford and Josh Maurer

Research interests: Dr. Duda's research uses bacteriophages as model systems to learn how proteins assemble into complex biological structures. The structural components of phages are particularly appropriate because they are large enough that we can visualize them using electron microscopy and detect them using simple gel assays, but simple enough that we know all of the genes required to produce them and can easily make mutations in these genes and study their effects on assembly and structure. Three easily studied parts of phages are tails, tail fibers, and capsids.

Experimental systems: R. Duda's research focuses mainly on capsids and in particular the capsid of E. coli phage HK97. Other projects include looking at the structure and assembly of the capsids of some additional phages, including D3, phi1026b, XP10, T5 and P1.

Click here to learn more about the ongoing research in the lab.


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