Amal Wasana Mudalige, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral research fellow

Education
Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, 2007

Lab
Sam Lehrer

Research Interests
The overall aim of our project is to determine the troponin I (TnI), troponin C and troponin T site(s) that interact with specific sites on tropomyosin (Tm) in a Ca2+-dependent manner on the muscle thin filament. This will provide information on changing interactions between the troponin components and Tm important in regulation. Photochemical crosslinkers  are activated by UV light and the resulting crosslinked species are isolated on SDS gels. The bands that are sensitive to Ca2+ will undergo tryptic digestion and new crosslinked species will be determined by MALDI. Using cardiac troponin containing mutations that cause cardiomyopathies will also be targeted to understand the origin of the diseases. The movement of TnI on thin filaments between three different actin sites which interfere with myosin binding [Blocked, Closed and Open] will be directly verified.

Recent Publications:
Mudalige WA, Jackman DM, Mercer R, Heeley DH. The distribution of a slow muscle actin in the animal kingdom. Manuscript in preparation.

Goonasekara C, Mudalige WA, Heeley DH. Regulatory and conformational properties of fast, slow and cardiac muscle isoforms of tropomyosin. Submitted.

Mudalige WA, Jackman DM, Waddleton DM, Heeley DH. (2007) A vertebrate slow skeletal muscle actin isoform. FEBS J. 274(13):3452-3461.

Contact Info
email: mudalige@bbri.org, tel. 617-658-7792