User:Cookb

About Me

Brian L. Cook, Ph.D.

cookb[at]mit[dot]edu

Before moving to the Bay Area, I completed a post-doc as Detector Layer team leader for the MIT RealNose project, a DARPA-funded effort to engineer a biologically-based smell sensor utilizing olfactory receptor proteins. Our work at MIT stemmed from my Ph.D. research project on the large-scale purification and characterization of olfactory receptors.

• Science Daily news article on the research
• It was even (comically) mentioned on Perez Hilton!

I've also enjoyed working in synthetic biology as a Graduate Advisor to the 2007 and 2008 MIT iGEM teams. For more info on iGEM (the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition), please see:

• [The 2007 MIT iGEM Page]
• [The 2008 MIT iGEM Page]
• Official iGEM website

Publications

1. Kong DS, Cook BL, Liu WE, Corin KA,Ravel DB, Melo P, Zhang S, Jacobsen JM. Cell-free synthesis of olfactory receptor membrane proteins in microfluidic devices. Manuscript in preparation.

2. Corin K, Cook B, and Zhang S. A robust, rapid, and simple method of producing olfactory receptors using commercial E. coli cell-free systems. Methods Mol Biol. 2013;1003:101-8. DOI:10.1007/978-1-62703-377-0_7 |
3. Corin K, Pick H, Baaske P, Cook BL, Duhr S, Wienken CJ, Braun D, Vogel H, and Zhang S. Insertion of T4-lysozyme (T4L) can be a useful tool for studying olfactory-related GPCRs. Mol Biosyst. 2012 Jun;8(6):1750-9. DOI:10.1039/c2mb05495g |
4. Cook BL, Steuerwald D, Kaiser L, Graveland-Bikker J, Vanberghem M, Berke AP, Herlihy K, Pick H, Vogel H, and Zhang S. Large-scale production and study of a synthetic G protein-coupled receptor: human olfactory receptor 17-4. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Jul 21;106(29):11925-30. DOI:10.1073/pnas.0811089106 |
5. Ren H, Yu D, Ge B, Cook B, Xu Z, and Zhang S. High-level production, solubilization and purification of synthetic human GPCR chemokine receptors CCR5, CCR3, CXCR4 and CX3CR1. PLoS One. 2009;4(2):e4509. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0004509 |
6. Jiang X, Austin PF, Niederhoff RA, Manson SR, Riehm JJ, Cook BL, Pengue G, Chitaley K, Nakayama K, Nakayama KI, and Weintraub SJ. Mechanoregulation of proliferation. Mol Cell Biol. 2009 Sep;29(18):5104-14. DOI:10.1128/MCB.00465-09 |
7. Cook BL, Ernberg KE, Chung H, and Zhang S. Study of a synthetic human olfactory receptor 17-4: expression and purification from an inducible mammalian cell line. PLoS One. 2008 Aug 6;3(8):e2920. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0002920 |
8. Mershin A, Cook B, Kaiser L, and Zhang S. A classic assembly of nanobiomaterials. Nat Biotechnol. 2005 Nov;23(11):1379-80. DOI:10.1038/nbt1105-1379 |
9. Austin PF, Cook BL, Niederhoff RA, Manson SR, Coplen DE, and Weintraub SJ. Inhibition of mitogenic signaling and induction of apoptosis in human bladder smooth muscle cells treated with doxazosin. J Urol. 2004 Oct;172(4 Pt 2):1662-5; discussion 1666. DOI:10.1097/01.ju.0000138524.18870.af |
10. Deverman BE, Cook BL, Manson SR, Niederhoff RA, Langer EM, Rosová I, Kulans LA, Fu X, Weinberg JS, Heinecke JW, Roth KA, and Weintraub SJ. Bcl-xL deamidation is a critical switch in the regulation of the response to DNA damage. Cell. 2002 Oct 4;111(1):51-62. DOI:10.1016/s0092-8674(02)00972-8 |
11. He S, Cook BL, Deverman BE, Weihe U, Zhang F, Prachand V, Zheng J, and Weintraub SJ. E2F is required to prevent inappropriate S-phase entry of mammalian cells. Mol Cell Biol. 2000 Jan;20(1):363-71. DOI:10.1128/MCB.20.1.363-371.2000 |