COLLABORATION IN BASIC SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING (COBASE)

Theo Dreher hosted Boris Negrutskii of Ukraine for a two-month period in September 1999. During Negrutskii’s visit, this team was able to complete the preparation of a grant proposal submitted October 1, 1999, to the Cooperative Grants Program of the U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation. This proposal will be used in the future as the basis for a submission to the National Science Foundation. The scientific goals of this collaboration were to quantitatively assess the stabilities of the four possible complexes between eEF1A translation elongation factor and transfer RNA: that is, interaction of both the GDP-bound and GTP-bound forms of the protein with the aminoacylated and non-aminoacylated forms of tRNA. During the two-month collaboration, they were able to bring together the necessary reagents and conduct pilot experiments. Both report that they have established a strong working relationship and have clarified the future course of experiments.