Past Cranefield Award Winners

Rikard Blunck currently holds a faculty position at the Université de Montréal, Canada. He received his PhD in physics from the University of Kiel, Germany, and did his postdoctoral work at the University of California at Los Angeles in the laboratory of F. Bezanilla. His research interests are directed towards understanding structure function relations of voltage-gated potassium channels and pore forming toxins. He is using voltage-clamp fluorometry to investigate conformational changes of these membrane proteins and link them to their function. He received the award for the development of a technique to monitor fluorescence changes of proteins reconstituted in planar lipid bilayer. He and his coworkers used the technique to determine the pore forming mechanism of the toxin Cry1Aa of Bacillus thuringiensis. This work was published in JGP under the title “Rapid topology probing using fluorescence spectroscopy in planar lipid bilayer: the pore-forming mechanism of the toxin Cry1Aa of Bacillus thuringiensis.” (JGP 136 no. 5 497-513.)