Kurt E. Ebner Professor Emeritus Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology University of Kansas Medical Center 913-588-7030 kebner@kumc.edu

Education and Experience

University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, Ph.D., 1960

University of Reading, England (Postdoctoral Fellow)

University of Minnesota (Postdoctoral Fellow, Instructor)

Oklahoma State University (Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Regents Professor)

Major Research Interests

Recent research efforts focus on determining how the protein hormone prolactin interacts with its receptor, which is the first step in understanding how this class of hormones functions. We have expressed the extracellular domain of the rat liver prolactin receptor in the vaccinia virus expression system and showed that the purified extracellular domain forms a complex with prolactin of the type: (extracellular domain)2 (prolactin). Studies using site-directed mutagenesis will be used to determine the amino acids necessary to form this complex and how the complex initiates signal transduction in the cell.

Another study has focused on the interaction between a sense peptide found in prolactin and its corresponding anti-sense peptide derived from the minus strand of the prolactin DNA. These peptides form a complex in solution and the antisense peptide forms antibodies which recognize the prolactin receptor. Future studies using microcalorimetry will focus on determining how these peptides interact in solution.

Representative Publications: