Dr. Schuck obtained his Ph.D. from the Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where he worked on interactions of integral proteins of the erythrocyte membrane using analytical ultracentrifugation. He received his post-doctoral research training in physical biochemistry with Dr. Allen Minton at NIDDK, and joined the Bioengineering and Physical Science Program of NCRR as a Research Fellow in 1997. He is currently a Earl Stadtman Tenure-Track Investigator and Chief of the Dynamics of Macromoleular Assembly Section, Laboratory of Cellular Imaging and Macromolecular Biophysics at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Institutes of Health. Dr. Zhao received her Ph.D. in Chemistry, with a specialization in protein biochemistry, before spending two years on her post-doctoral research at the University of Maryland, where she worked on the study of protein-DNA and protein-protein interactions. Dr. Zhao joined the NIBIB as a Research Fellow in 2008. She has been working in the intramural research’s Laboratory of Cellular Imaging and Macromolecular Biophysics, Dynamics of Macromolecular Assembly Section on development of biophysical methodology for characterizing a variety of macromolecules, including proteins, nucleic acids, polymers and nanoparticles. Her current work has focused on applications of advanced techniques of biophysics and physical biochemistry, including sedimentation velocity and sedimentation equilibrium analytical ultracentrifugation, isothermal titration calorimetry, fluorescence spectroscopy and surface plasmon resonance biosensing.
After laying down the fundamentals of analytical centrifugation in his first book, and the basis of sedimentation analysis of multicomponent systems in the second one, the third book in the series deals with the most crucial aspects, present in every practical case, arising from physical and chemical interactions between the different species in the sample. Dr. Schuck presents a detailed description of the nature of the interactions, their influence in the sedimentation patterns, and the ways to account for them in the analysis of experimental data. The author considers, on the one hand, physical intramolecular interactions, showing how they must be properly considered when one looks for structural information of the individual species. And, on the other hand, the book dwells amply in the most significant case of chemically reacting systems. The homo- or hetero-association of biomacromolecules is an aspect of extraordinary importance in many topics in life sciences, from signalling processes in systems biology, to problems about protein aggregation in neuroscience or pharmacology. The book provides conceptual information, as well as practical guidance on the extraction of information about such interactions by means of the excellent, public-domain computer tools that Dr Schuck has developed and made available. ~Jose Garcia de la Torre, Professor of Physical Chemisty, University of Murcia This book is a must-read for scientists investigating interacting systems by sedimentation velocity analytical ultracentrifugation. It comprehensively describes the phenomenology of sedimentation of self-associating and hetero-associating systems showing slow or fast kinetics, and presents in mathematical detail several approximate and exact solutions for data evaluation. Not only for unexperienced users, the chapter `Practical Analysis of Interacting Systems' is particularly helpful, since all considerations necessary for experimental design up to quantitative analysis of the experimental data are described thoroughly. It is especially valuable that a multitude of examples throughout the book illustrate how reaction kinetics, concentrations and non-ideality will influence the results. This helps to plan actual experiments and to avoid misinterpretation of the data. Most notably reactions that are fast on the time-scale of sedimentation show properties that can be misleading and may appear counter-intuitive to the unexperienced experimenter. Here these processes are very well described, illustrated by cartoons and their impact on the sedimentation behavior of the system is explained. This book superbly summarizes the present state of the art of sedimentation velocity analysis on interacting systems and saves the investigator to read through piles of research papers on this subject. ~Professor Ute Curth, Hannover Medical School