Elaine C. Meng
B.S.Pharm., Ph.D
My scientific interests are in protein structure/function and computational chemistry. I am a Specialist in the Babbitt group and UCSF Computer Graphics Laboratory (CGL). The CGL is developing the molecular graphics and analysis program Chimera. As a member of the development team, I write the Chimera User's Guide, interact with users, test the software, and make suggestions. Other laboratories I have worked in are the Kuntz group (docking and scoring), the Kollman group (molecular dynamics and free energy calculations), the Cohen group (structure-based drug design), and the Bourne group (structure/function of G proteins and GPCRs).
Background
I was born and raised in Ohio. After attending a variety of educational institutions, I graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1988 with a degree in Pharmacy. I am a registered pharmacist, but nonpracticing (Ohio license only). My PhD thesis, entitled "Tools for Ligand Discovery and Design: Molecular Docking and Structural Databases," was completed in 1993 in Prof. Irwin "Tack" Kuntz' group, Dept. of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, UCSF. I spent two years as a postdoc in Prof. Peter Kollman's group before taking a staff position at UCSF (groups listed above; see also my curriculum vitae).
I married Eric Pettersen in October 1995. My hobbies include playing the piano, reading, solving crosswords, and finding typos.
Pictures:- CGL staff portrait (June 2005)
Selected Publications
- Tools for integrated sequence-structure analysis with UCSF Chimera: E.C. Meng, E.F. Pettersen, G.S. Couch, C.C. Huang, and T.E. Ferrin, BMC Bioinformatics 7, 339 (2006).
- UCSF Chimera - A Visualization System for Exploratory Research and Analysis: E.F. Pettersen, T.D. Goddard, C.C. Huang, G.S. Couch, D.M. Greenblatt, E.C. Meng, and T.E. Ferrin, J. Comput. Chem. 25, 1605 (2004).
- Superfamily Active Site Templates: E.C. Meng, B.J. Polacco, and P.C. Babbitt, Proteins 55, 962 (2004).
- Receptor activation: what does the rhodopsin structure tell us?: E.C. Meng and H.R. Bourne, Trends Pharmacol. Sci. 22, 587 (2001).
- An Activation Switch in the Ligand Binding Pocket of the C5a Receptor: B.O. Gerber, E.C. Meng, V. Dötsch, T.J. Baranski, and H.R. Bourne, J. Biol. Chem. 276, 3394 (2001).
- Rhodopsin Sees the Light: H.R. Bourne and E.C. Meng, Science 289, 733 (2000).
- Molecular Dynamics Studies of the Properties of Water around Simple Organic Solutes: E.C. Meng and P.A. Kollman, J. Phys. Chem. 100, 11460 (1996).
- Investigating the Anomalous Solvation Free Energies of Amines with a Polarizable Potential: E.C. Meng, J.W. Caldwell, and P.A. Kollman, J. Phys. Chem. 100, 2367 (1996).
- Evaluating Docked Complexes with the HINT Exponential Function and Empirical Atomic Hydrophobicities: E.C. Meng, I.D. Kuntz, D.J. Abraham, and G.E. Kellogg, J. Comput.-Aided Mol. Des. 8, 299 (1994).
- Automated Docking with Grid-Based Energy Evaluation: E.C. Meng, B.K. Shoichet, and I.D. Kuntz, J. Comput. Chem. 13, 505 (1992).
- Determination of Molecular Topology and Atomic Hybridization States from Heavy Atom Coordinates: E.C. Meng and R.A. Lewis, J. Comput. Chem. 12, 891 (1991).
- A Novel Synthesis of Xanthines: Support for a New Binding Mode for Xanthines with Respect to Adenosine at Adenosine Receptors: N.P. Peet, N.L. Lentz, E.C. Meng, M.W. Dudley, A.M.L. Ogden, D.A. Demeter, H.J.R. Weintraub, and P. Bey, J. Med. Chem. 33, 3127 (1990).
See also...
CV (lists all publications)
list of online resources for structure superposition
