Arthur Glasfeld
Margret Geselbracht Professor of Chemistry
Chemistry Department
Division of Mathematical and Natural Sciences
My interests as a biochemist are in exploring how the structure of a protein, obtained by x-ray crystallography, gives rise to its functional properties. In recent years I have worked with bacterial regulatory proteins, which respond to chemicals in the environment by turning gene expression on and off. These proteins are critical to bacterial survival, and could be attractive targets for antibiotic development. I'm interested in how regulators respond specifically to a given molecule or ion and the structural origin of that response. My teaching at Reed has mostly been in the first year chemistry courses and in the biochemistry curriculum, where I enjoy sharing my enthusiasm for anthropomorphizing molecules and their behavior. I received my BA from Carleton College and my PhD from Harvard University, and did a post-doc at MIT. I was recently awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to spend a sabbatical year (2019-20) at Durham University in the UK.