Profile for Todd Weaver

Professional history

I graduated from UWL as a first generation college student with major in microbiology and a minor in chemistry. Upon graduation from UWL I worked for a year at Fort Detrick, which is a US Army Command Installation located in Frederick, MD.  Fort Detrick was the location for the U.S. biological weapons program and is now the location for the biological defense program. Fort Detrick has been featured in a number of TV shows and movies, including the 2019 mini-series "The Hot Zone".  This mini-series centered upon an ebola outbreak at a research facility in Reston, VA and tissue samples from affected crab-elating macaque monkeys were analyzed at Fort Detrick.  Luckily, this form of ebola was deemed non-pathogenic to humans.  

My career interest in protein structure-function started at Fort Detrick (https://www.military.com/base-guide/fort-detrick (Links to an external site.)). My primary role at Fort Detrick was to purify HIV reverse transcriptase (HIV RT). This enzyme allows HIV, a retrovirus, to synthesize DNA from its own RNA genome. HIV RT was the first enzyme targeted by the anti-retroviral azidothymidine or AZT.  As a thymidine analogue, AZT arrests viral DNA synthesis and slows viral replication. The purified HIV RT we provided to a group of structural biologists at Rutgers University was used to solve the 3D structure in 1996 (https://www.rcsb.org/structure/1UWB).  (Links to an external site.)

After Fort Detrick I earned my Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology (https://cbs.umn.edu/academics/departments/bmbb/graduate-program/about-graduate-program (Links to an external site.)). My focus in graduate school was the 3D structural determination of fumarase, a Krebs Cycle enzyme (https://www.rcsb.org/structure/1FUO (Links to an external site.)).

I started at UWL in 1998  and helped establish our Biochemistry Major almost 20 years ago. I have an active research group and collaborate with a number of students and faculty on two structure-function related projects, including (1) fumarase - a central metabolic enzyme and (2) hemolysin - a Gram-negative produced hemolytic toxin.  Our most recent fumarase results noted the importance of loop conformational change and enzyme function (https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/1873-3468.13603 (Links to an external site.)), while our most recent hemolysin A contribution correlated proteolysis and protein dimerization (http://scripts.iucr.org/cgi-bin/paper?S2053230X17002102 (Links to an external site.)).

The best way to contact me is via email at tweaver@uwlax.edu.  The best hours to reach me are between 8 am - 4 pm from M - Fr. I will do my best to provide an email response the day your message is sent.