Decade of biophysics research published

A decade’s worth of Grove City College alumni have engaged in molecular biophysics research with physics professor Dr. Glenn A. Marsch on a project now in publication in an important scientific journal.

Cytochrome P450 3A4 is an enzyme found in humans that metabolizes almost half of all medicines on the market, so it is intensely studied by the pharmacology community. In collaboration with Prof. F.P. Guengerich of Vanderbilt University (who discovered the enzyme), Marsch has been applying fluorescence spectroscopy and fluorescence quenching models to establish how P450 3A4 binds drug molecules. 

Marsch’s paper “7,8-Benzoflavone Binding to Human Cytochrome P450 3A4 Reveals Complex Fluorescence Quenching, Suggesting Binding at Multiple Protein Sites” has been published online in the Journal of Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics (20 March 2017), with paper publication to follow. 

The journal ranks within the top 25 percent of all journals in biochemistry, molecular biology and biophysics. Most of the data was acquired while Marsch was on sabbatical at Vanderbilt University in 2013.

The work includes physics alumnus Benjamin T. Carlson ’10 as a co-author. Sixteen other Grove City College students assisted in this research and are listed in the “acknowledgments” section of the paper: Joshua Inks ’06, Judah Henry ’7, David Marsch ’12, Jon Guglielmon ’10, David Smith ’10, Jennifer (Hansen) Wright ’11, Elaine Mihelc ’09, Emily Kozlowski ’11, Becky (Kraft) Durfee ’10, David Lewis ’13, Mike Benich ’12, Jimmy Gregory ’16, Jeremy Smith ’15, Tim Rogers ’14, Samuel Niehaus, and Tucker Sigourney ’16.

To learn more about Physics at Grove City College, visit www.gcc.edu/phys.