Enzymes have always been a passion for Dr. Dorothee Kern (BCHM). The research scientist has studied the proteins that serve as catalysts for chemical reactions since she was in college. Now at Brandeis, her love and commitment for science and etymology has led her to discover an innovative method of photographing them."Catalysts always fascinated me since I was a student," Kern said.

Kern graduated from Martin Luther University in Halle, West Germany with a degree in biochemistry, and came to Brandeis in 1999 largely coincidentally during her first year as a postdoctorate student at the University of California at Berkeley. She was not looking for a job at the time but instead was concerned with "having a good time with my research." After speaking at a conference at Berkeley, she was invited to work at Brandeis as a professor and researcher. She accepted the position, as Brandeis is one of the leading institutes for etymological research, Kern said.

During her study, Kern worked to improve the photographing of enzymes, the proteins that accelerate reactions within the human body. Watching enzymes in action has been fundamental to progress in the development of medicine. Previously, scientists had only been able to snap photographs of the enzymes, but Kern and her team were essentially able to create a movie of the changing proteins. Kern used "big magnets" at Brandeis to obtain more close-up and accurate pictures of the enzyme movement, as well as closer together in time. She used nuclear magnetic resonance, a method of enzyme photography that is strong enough to capture the quick motion of an enzyme reaction.

The study proved groundbreaking, as Kern and her research team of Brandeis graduate students used a variety of theories and mechanical methods to capture the enzymes as they changed shape even before the presence of a substrate, the molecules at the beginning of the chemical reaction, which are then converted to different molecules by the enzyme.

The newly advanced photography of the enzymes was "really a teamwork between grad students and postdocs with different degrees," Kern said. Biochemists and physicists were instrumental in the study, she said. "Each method has its advantages and disadvantages." The process has helped scientists start to really understand enzyme cytolysis, which can help in research with proteins. This is "fundamental in understanding how proteins work," Kern said.

The results of her study will provide benefit to the production and design of medical drugs. Drug design is based on the identification of the static structure of small molecules and moving the "drugs onto the structure to see which one fits best," thus finding an effective medicine. Kern said this was not successful in the past, but "now we can see the changing of the shape of enzymes," which will facilitate the fitting of drug structure onto molecules.

The study took four years and "was a long journey," Kern said. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Institute of Health, from which Kern and her students won a grant, helped in part by Kern's recent status as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. The money provided the researchers with much-needed equipment such as labels for enzymes.

"I'm definitely interested in the next step of finding out how the proteins change shape and the time scale," Kern said. The workings of nature in the human body continue to fascinate the professor. She said she wants to delve further into the "pathways of how you can go from one structure to another and toward understanding processes in a cell." This, she said, can lead to breakthroughs in cancer, Alzheimer's disease, memory and learning processes research.