Elaine Meng, PhD

email:

meng@cgl.ucsf.edu

address:

Box 0446
Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
University of California
San Francisco, CA 94143

My scientific interests are in protein structure/function and computational chemistry. I am an Assistant Researcher in the Babbitt group and UCSF Computer Graphics Laboratory (CGL). I am also writing on-line documentation for Chimera, the molecular graphics program being developed by the CGL.

Other laboratories I have worked in are the Kuntz group (docking and scoring), the Kollman group (molecular dynamics and free energy calculations), the Cohen group (structure-based drug design), and the Bourne group (structure/function of G proteins and GPCRs).

Background

I was born in Ohio in 1966. After attending a variety of educational institutions, I graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1988 with a degree in Pharmacy. I am a registered pharmacist, but only licensed to practice in Ohio. My PhD thesis, entitled "Tools for Ligand Discovery and Design: Molecular Docking and Structural Databases," was completed in 1993 in Prof. Irwin Kuntz' group, Dept. of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, UCSF. After two years as a postdoc in Prof. Peter Kollman's group, I became an Assistant Researcher at UCSF. (See also my plain text curriculum vitae.)

I married Eric Pettersen in October 1995 (see also Eric's home page). Avocations include playing the piano (mainly Bach and Chopin), reading science fiction, clothes-shopping, and doing crossword puzzles.

• Eric
• both of us
• our chinchilla (sadly, in memoriam)

Representative Publications

• A Novel Synthesis of Xanthines: Support for a New Binding Mode for Xanthines with Respect to Adenosine at Adenosine Receptors: N.P. Peet, N.L. Lentz, E.C. Meng, M.W. Dudley, A.M.L. Ogden, D.A. Demeter, H.J.R. Weintraub, and P. Bey, J. Med. Chem., 33, 3127 (1990).
• Determination of Molecular Topology and Atomic Hybridization States from Heavy Atom Coordinates: E.C. Meng and R.A. Lewis, J. Comp. Chem., 12, 891 (1991).
• Automated Docking with Grid-Based Energy Evaluation: E.C. Meng, B.K. Shoichet, and I.D. Kuntz, J. Comp. Chem., 13, 505 (1992).
• Evaluating Docked Complexes with the HINT Exponential Function and Empirical Atomic Hydrophobicities: E.C. Meng, I.D. Kuntz, D.J. Abraham, and G.E. Kellogg, J. Comp.-Aided Mol. Design, 8, 299 (1994).
• Receptor-Based Molecular Design: I.D. Kuntz, E.C. Meng, and B.K. Shoichet, Accts. Chem. Res., 27, 117 (1994)
• Investigating the Anomalous Solvation Free Energies of Amines with a Polarizable Potential: E.C. Meng, J.W. Caldwell, and P.A. Kollman, J. Phys. Chem., 100, 2367 (1996).
• Molecular Dynamics Studies of the Properties of Water around Simple Organic Solutes: E.C. Meng and P.A. Kollman, J. Phys. Chem., 100, 11460 (1996).
• Similar Structure and Shared Switch Mechanisms of the Beta-2 Adrenoceptor and the Parathyroid Hormone Receptor: Zn(II) Bridges Between Helices III and VI Block Activation: S.P. Sheikh, J.-P. Vilardarga, T.J. Baranski, O. Lichtarge, T. Iiri, E.C. Meng, R.A. Nissenson, and H.R. Bourne, J. Biol. Chem, 274, 17033 (1999).
• Rhodopsin Sees the Light: H.R. Bourne and E.C. Meng, Science, 289, 733 (2000).
• An Activation Switch in the Ligand Binding Pocket of the C5a Receptor: B.O. Gerber, E.C. Meng, V. Dotsch, T.J. Baranski, and H.R. Bourne, J. Biol. Chem, 276, 3394 (2001).
• Receptor activation: what does the rhodopsin structure tell us?: E.C. Meng and H.R. Bourne, Trends Pharm. Sci., 22, 587 (2001).

See also...

My GPCR data compilations