Marty Ytreberg, a University of Idaho associate professor of physics, is no stranger to a research filled lifestyle.
“For my past 10 years here, a typical semester for me is based around 50 to 60 percent research, while the other portion is spent teaching,” Ytreberg said.
Now, with the help of a $6 million grant, a multi-university team and nearly four years to conduct research, Ytreberg is about to become even more enveloped in the research of amino acids.
Ytreberg said the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant will cover the entire cost of the four-year-long project. Ytreberg and his team applied for the grant late last winter through the NSF’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research program.
“The project as a whole will look at how the changes in amino acids, which make up protein molecules, affect the characteristics of organisms,” Ytreberg said.
He said this sort of research can be conducted through the lens of a common virus. When a single amino acid or a single protein in a virus is changed, it can affect the ability of a virus to infect the organism.
With the use of molecular modeling, a type of computer simulation, Ytreberg said he and his team will be able to track how the protein develops once virtually altered.
“The idea — once we can do all that — is to predict these changes even further down the line,” Ytreberg said. “How quickly can the virus infect the cell? How fast will the virus assemble? These are the questions we can look at.”
Ytreberg said one of the more consistent areas of the project will regard continuously surveying the effectiveness of the team’s computer models.
However, one of the largest aspects of the research project is based around measuring what Ytreberg calls the “downstream effects,” or the possible outcomes of the protein changes.
Ytreberg said this specific project was born out of the Center for Modeling Complex Interactions, a center housed in UI’s Integrated Research and Innovation Center, which brings together various scientists and varying projects.
“The whole point of this sort of project is to bring together scientists at the very beginning, rather than just talking about the research at the end,” Ytreberg said.
Ytreberg said he hopes to fully build the capacity for a stronger infrastructure regarding this type of research.
“One of the primary goals is simply the science,” Ytreberg said. “It is important we attempt to make these predictions because it is a fairly unknown, understudied set of research. We hope to learn so much more.”
With a team of what Ytreberg predicts to be 25 to 30 combined researchers from UI, Brown University and the University of Vermont, he said most of the funding from the grant will help to pay for their time and provide for annual meetings and travel over the next four years.
“The idea is to help the younger researchers build their careers and give them mentorship to build on over the next couple years,” Ytreberg said. “In this way they can advance onto other projects and gain that experience.”
Ytreberg said this sort of project — a project that requires a strong understanding of the sciences and a heavy dose of administrative work — is what he finds most interesting about this new job.
“What I’m anticipating is there will be things we don’t understand that we run into along the way. Those will provide perfect sorts of questions to pursue other funding later on,” Ytreberg said. “Hopefully we answer what we seek, but I also hope that we gather so many more questions.”
Hailey Stewart can be reached at [email protected]