Shane Claggett
Shane Claggett | |
|---|---|
| Residence | Los Angeles, CA, United States |
| Known for | Biochemistry, computational protein design, water, quantum mechanics, consciousness |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Biochemistry, radiochemistry, scientific software |
| Institutions | University of Florida University of California, Los Angeles |
Shane B. Claggett is an American biochemist and scientific software developer based in Los Angeles, California. His published research spans the structure and function of the F1Fo ATP synthase enzyme and the development of automated instrumentation and control software for radiochemistry. He has expressed interests in computational protein design, the role of water in biological systems, and connections between quantum mechanics and consciousness.
Biography
Claggett carried out graduate research in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he studied the rotary molecular motor ATP synthase. He subsequently worked in the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology and the Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he contributed to the development of automated radiosynthesis instrumentation used to produce tracers for positron emission tomography (PET).
Work
At the University of Florida, Claggett was a co-author on a series of studies of the peripheral stalk of the bacterial ATP synthase from Escherichia coli. This work examined how the enzyme's b subunit binds the F1 catalytic head, including experiments that manipulated the length of the b subunit F1-binding domain, incorporated chimeric b subunits combining sequences from E. coli and Thermosynechococcus elongatus into functional heterodimeric stalks, and probed the contribution of the residue b Arg36 to efficient coupling of the motor.
At UCLA he worked on ELIXYS, a fully automated, three-reactor high-pressure radiosynthesizer developed with Sofie Biosciences for the development and routine production of diverse PET tracers. Claggett contributed to the design of the system's control software, intended to make programming and operating an automated radiosynthesizer more intuitive, and provided software used for data acquisition in studies characterizing the temperatures and pressures reached during short radiochemical reactions.
Beyond his published laboratory work, Claggett has described interests in computational protein design, the structuring of water in biological systems, and hypotheses linking quantum mechanics to consciousness.