Shelagh M. Ferguson-Miller, University Distinguished Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Michigan State University, will present the seminar “The Multifaceted Story of TSPO—an Old Protein With New Functions.”

Shelagh’s research has focused mainly on mitochondrial energy transduction as carried out by cytochrome c oxidase, a multisubunit intrinsic membrane protein that is key to energy transduction in mitochondria and bacteria. They have used many approaches, including crystallography, mutagenesis, biochemistry, spectroscopy and kinetics. An enabling discovery was the finding that certain alkyl glycoside detergents (e.g. lauryl maltoside) facilitated purification of a highly active, stable form of oxidase, a discovery that applied generally to membrane proteins, making it a detergent of choice for stabilization and crystallization of membrane proteins.