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Draft:Lucy R. Forrest

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Lucy Rachel Forrest is a researcher and Senior Investigator at National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).[1] During her undergraduate years, she performed research with both Eli Lilly and Mark Sansom in the area of biochemistry. As a postgraduate, she worked with Tom Woolf, John E. Walker and Barry Honig before moving on to perform independent research on transport mechanisms.[2] As Section Chief and Investigator for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), she hosts a lab focusing on “questions relating to membrane proteins, spanning specific mechanisms of individual proteins through to general biophysical principles.”[3] She was granted the Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award[4] from the Biophysical Society in 2012 for her work in biophysics, and has attended conferences to present her findings since 2013.[5]

Educational Career

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Forrest studied chemistry at the University of Surrey, UK, with a minor in computing and received her Bachelor of Science degree. She moved to Oxford in 1997, and received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford in 2000. Forrest was a grantee for the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program, and was awarded the Fulbright or Royal Society Fellowship.[6] She moved to New York City, NY, USA in 2003 to work at Columbia University Medical School.[2]

In 2007, Forrest was designated the Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt, Germany. In 2012, she was a recipient of the Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award for her research on “conformational changes of membrane proteins related to their function, and her impact on the field of computational structural biology”.[4] Forrest has been an Investigator and Section Chief for the NIH in Bethesda, MD, USA since 2013, and hosts a lab where she conducts her research.[7] In August 2013, she was granted tenure for her current organization, NINDS, and in 2017 was promoted to Senior Investigator. Forrest is also a mentor for the National Research Mentoring Network, where she aims to increase accessibility and inclusivity of science.[8]

Research

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Forrest participated in Eli Lilly’s research site in Windlesham, Surrey, attempting to identify replacements for the popular antidepressant, Prozac. After moving to Oxford, the research she performed was supervised by Mark Sansom: she simulated and modeled membrane proteins in lipid bilayers, and further studied proton channels and predicted numbers of subunits in the ATP-synthase c-ring.[2]

Forrest performed postdoctoral research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine under Tom Woolf’s laboratory, focusing on methods to model protein structures. She had a second brief postdoctoral research period with John E. Walker at the Medical Research Council Dunn Human Nutrition Unit in Cambridge, UK. Forrest then moved to New York City, NY, USA, to work at Columbia University with Barry Honig, focusing on predicting the protein structure of membranes. Since 2005, she has been conducting independent research on secondary transport mechanisms. After joining NINDS and hosting her laboratory in NIH in 2013, Forrest has conducted with an interest in the role of pseudo-symmetry in transport mechanisms, using computational modeling and simulation methods to address questions related to secondary transport.[2]

Forrest has published her research in NIH, the Journal of Neuroscience,[9] the EncoMPASS online database,[10] the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,[11] the Journal of Biological Chemistry,[12] the Biophysical Journal,[13] the Wiley Online Library,[14] Nature,[15] Science,[16] and more. She has been cited by Sandra National Laboratories with the topic of understanding the dynamics of the membrane protein rhodopsin.[17]

Conferences

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Forrest has attended several academic conferences throughout her career, including the annual Gordon Research Conference and the Biophysical Society meetings.

Forrest was the vice chair and discussion leader for the Sugar Transport section of the Gordon Research Conference’s Mechanisms of Membrane Transport conference in 2013 in Mount Holyoke College, MA, USA.[5] In 2015, she traveled to Bates College to present once again in Mechanisms of Membrane Transport: Integrating Structure, Function and Dynamics.[18] In 2023, Forrest returned to present for the subsection Structure, Dynamics and Allosteric Regulation.[19]

In 2017, Forrest traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, to present in the Transporters and Exchangers sections I and II for the Biophysical Society.[20] She returned to the society in 2018 in San Francisco, CA, USA, to speak in the platform Membrane Pumps, Transporters, and Exchangers.[21]

References

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  1. ^ "Home | NINDS Division of Intramural Research". research.ninds.nih.gov. Retrieved 2024-05-16.
  2. ^ a b c d "Introducing the new members of the JGP Editorial Advisory Board". rupress.org. Retrieved 2024-05-16.
  3. ^ "Lucy R. Forrest, D.Phil. | NINDS Division of Intramural Research". research.ninds.nih.gov. Retrieved 2024-05-16.
  4. ^ a b "Science X Network :: Phys.org, Medical Xpress, Tech Xplore". sciencex.com. Retrieved 2024-05-30.
  5. ^ a b "2013 Mechanisms of Membrane Transport Conference GRC". www.grc.org. Retrieved 2024-05-16.
  6. ^ "University of Oxford | Fulbright Scholar Program". fulbrightscholars.org. Retrieved 2024-05-16.
  7. ^ "Computational Structural Biology Section | NINDS Division of Intramural Research". research.ninds.nih.gov. Retrieved 2024-05-16.
  8. ^ Staff, NRMN. "Dr. Lucy Forrest of the NIH on the Value of an NRMN Virtual Mentorship – NRMN". Retrieved 2024-05-16.
  9. ^ Tavoulari, Sotiria; Forrest, Lucy R.; Rudnick, Gary (2009-07-29). "Fluoxetine (Prozac) Binding to Serotonin Transporter Is Modulated by Chloride and Conformational Changes". Journal of Neuroscience. 29 (30): 9635–9643. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0440-09.2009. ISSN 0270-6474. PMC 3012355. PMID 19641126.
  10. ^ "EncoMPASS: an online database for analyzing structure and symmetry in membrane proteins". academic.oup.com. Retrieved 2024-05-16.
  11. ^ Yaffe, Dana; Vergara-Jaque, Ariela; Forrest, Lucy R.; Schuldiner, Shimon (2016-11-22). "Emulating proton-induced conformational changes in the vesicular monoamine transporter VMAT2 by mutagenesis". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 113 (47): E7390–E7398. Bibcode:2016PNAS..113E7390Y. doi:10.1073/pnas.1605162113. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 5127352. PMID 27821772.
  12. ^ Tavoulari, Sotiria; Margheritis, Eleonora; Nagarajan, Anu; DeWitt, David C.; Zhang, Yuan-Wei; Rosado, Edwin; Ravera, Silvia; Rhoades, Elizabeth; Forrest, Lucy R.; Rudnick, Gary (2016-01-15). "Two Na+ Sites Control Conformational Change in a Neurotransmitter Transporter Homolog*". Journal of Biological Chemistry. 291 (3): 1456–1471. doi:10.1074/jbc.M115.692012. ISSN 0021-9258. PMC 4714228. PMID 26582198.
  13. ^ Fenollar-Ferrer, Cristina; Forster, Ian C.; Patti, Monica; Knoepfel, Thomas; Werner, Andreas; Forrest, Lucy R. (2015-05-19). "Identification of the First Sodium Binding Site of the Phosphate Cotransporter NaPi-IIa (SLC34A1)". Biophysical Journal. 108 (10): 2465–2480. Bibcode:2015BpJ...108.2465F. doi:10.1016/j.bpj.2015.03.054. ISSN 0006-3495. PMC 4457043. PMID 25992725.
  14. ^ Stamm, Marcus; Forrest, Lucy R. (2015-07-14). "Structure alignment of membrane proteins: Accuracy of available tools and a consensus strategy". Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics. 83 (9): 1720–1732. doi:10.1002/prot.24857. ISSN 0887-3585. PMC 4545697. PMID 26178143.
  15. ^ Perez, Camilo; Faust, Belinda; Mehdipour, Ahmad Reza; Francesconi, Kevin A.; Forrest, Lucy R.; Ziegler, Christine (2014-07-15). "Substrate-bound outward-open state of the betaine transporter BetP provides insights into Na+ coupling". Nature Communications. 5 (1): 4231. doi:10.1038/ncomms5231. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 4745115. PMID 25023443.
  16. ^ Forrest, Lucy R. (2013-01-25). "(Pseudo-)Symmetrical Transport". Science. 339 (6118): 399–401. Bibcode:2013Sci...339..399F. doi:10.1126/science.1228465. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 23349276.
  17. ^ Woolf, Thomas B.; Crozier, Paul Stewart; Stevens, Mark Jackson (2004-10-01). Molecular dynamics of membrane proteins (Report). Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Albuquerque, NM, and Livermore, CA (United States). OSTI 919637.
  18. ^ "Mechanisms of Membrane Transport - Gordon Research Conferences". www.grc.org. Retrieved 2024-05-16.
  19. ^ "2023 Mechanisms of Membrane Transport Conference GRC". www.grc.org. Retrieved 2024-05-16.
  20. ^ BPS18 61st Annual Meeting. Biophysical Society. (n.d.). https://www.biophysics.org/Portals/0/EasyDNNnews/Uploads/2133/Progarm%20Guide_WEB.pdf
  21. ^ BPS 62nd Annual Meeting. Biophysical Society. (n.d.-a). https://www.biophysics.org/Portals/0/EasyDNNnews/Uploads/2131/2018%20Program-WEB.pdf