Andrew J. Howard
Associate Professor of Biology and Physics, Illinois Institute of Technology

Office: Life Sciences Room 174
3101 South Dearborn Street
Chicago Illinois 60616 USA
312-567-5881, fax 312-567-3576, cell 773-368-5067
Alternative office: Sector 22, Advanced Photon Source, 630-252-0640
Biochemistry Lab: Life Sciences Room 316, 312-567-3434
X-ray Lab at IIT: Life Sciences Room 048 (under construction)
howard@iit.edu
Full curriculum vitae
NSF-style CV

Affiliations:

• faculty member, Center for Synchrotron Radiation Research and Instrumentation, BCPS Department, IIT
• Staff Crystallographer, Southeast Regional Collaborative Access Team, Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory
• Secretary, University Faculty Council, IIT
• Director, American Crystallographic Association Summer School in Macromolecular Crystallography, held each July at IIT, including 14-26 July 2008.
• Co-Director, IIT's Masters in Health Physics program
• member, American Crystallographic Association

Research specializations:

• Software for crystallographic data processing.
  Prof. Howard has been writing X-GEN, a software package for processing of macromolecular diffraction data, for many years; it is freely available for download.
• Applications of synchrotron radiation to macromolecular crystallography.
  Professor Howard was director of IMCA-CAT from 1996 to 2002, and Chief Scientific Officer from 2002-2004.
• Development of novel approaches to protein purification.
  Prof. Howard's group has, in conjunction with Profs. Dale Webster and Ben Stark, developed a plasmid, pKW32, that contains the gene for the hemoglobin from Vitreoscilla preceded by a his-tag and followed by a protease-sensitive linker. This can be used in expression systems, where the high solubility and the red color of the Vitreoscilla hemoglobin aid in expression and visualization.
• Structural genomics.
  Prof. Howard is co-principal investigator on an NIH-funded Program Project grant in structural genomics. The other investigators in the project are at the Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology (CARB), a unit of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute. In the first five years of the grant the primary focus of this work was on deriving function from structure in hypothetical proteins in the genome of Haemophilus influenzae, and the Haemophilus emphasis continues in the work at IIT. The focus at CARB is now on using structural genomics to analyze proteins derived from genes with multiple functional splice variants.

Teaching Responsibilities

Fall Semester 2008:

• Biology 401, Introductory Biochemistry; This is the first semester of a two-semester sequence. The second is biology 402, Metabolic Biochemistry, taught by Prof. Nicholas Menhart during spring semester. The live section of this class meets Tuesday and Thursday from 1:50 to 3:05pm in Life Sciences 121; the Internet section is also available.
• Biology 495/595, Biology Colloquium series
  Colloquia are generally held on Monday afternoons in Life Sciences Room 111 from 3:50 to 4:50 pm following refreshments at 3:35pm.

Research Group

• Gregory M. Sahli, graduate student
  Greg is working on converting the Vitreoscilla hemoglobin dimer into a monomer by site-directed changes to the dimerization domain.
• Pauls E. Reinfelds, graduate student
  Paul is focusing on structural studies of dystrophin constructs developed in Prof. Menhart's laboratory. He also is involved in improving the Vitreoscilla hemoglobin system as an expression tool.
• Shih-Chia Chang, graduate student
  Shih-Chia is working with Paul on the Vitreoscilla project and is also involved in purifying and crystallizing the complex of the cholera toxin A1 subunit with the human protein ARF-6.
• Sireesha Ratakonda, graduate student
  Sireesha is focusing on structures of specific Vitreoscilla hemoglobin mutants developed in Prof. Kanak Dikshit's laboratory and Prof. Stark's laboratory.