The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, may lead to a deeper understanding of proteins’ molecular architecture.

Zocchi’s graduate student, Brian Choi, worked with a transport protein called MBP (maltose binding protein), expressed in a bacterium. The MBP protein binds and transports a sugar.

The first applications Zocchi foresees for the new molecules are as amplified molecular probes. Currently it is difficult for scientists to study a single live cell and find what gene it is expressing, but with an amplified molecular probe, in principle one could inject the probe into a single cell and detect that the cell is expressing a particular gene, Zocchi said.

An amplified molecular probe would make it possible to study the individuality of cells, with applications in stem cell research and the early detection of disease, said Zocchi, whose laboratory was established in part through start-up funding from UCLA’s Division of Physical Sciences.

“I’m interested in conformational changes of macromolecules, and in understanding the physical basis of this allosteric mechanism, which is central to the regulation in the cell,” Zocchi said.

Text for this article comes from a UCLA press release.