CIRES is an internationally recognized leader in innovative environmental science and research and is located at the University of Colorado Boulder. At CIRES, more than 900 environmental science professionals work to understand the dynamic Earth system, including people’s relationship with the planet. CIRES has partnered with NOAA since 1967, and our areas of expertise include weather and climate, changes at Earth’s poles, air quality and atmospheric chemistry, water resources, solid Earth sciences, and more. Our vision is to be instrumental in ensuring a sustainable future environment by advancing scientific and societal understanding of the Earth system.
Housed in the Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology (MCDB) department, the Copley lab’s research centers on the molecular evolution of catalysts and metabolic pathways. Enzymes in metabolic pathways are superb catalysts, accelerating chemical reactions by up to 16 orders of magnitude. Many enzymes also catalyze adventitious secondary reactions, simply because active sites are loaded with highly reactive acids, bases, nucleophiles, metal ions, and cofactors. Although these “promiscuous” activities are inefficient, they provide a repertoire of activities that can be drawn upon if conditions change and catalysis of a secondary reaction becomes important for fitness. Projects in the lab seek to identify biochemical and physiological factors that influence the potential for evolution of novel activities from promiscuous enzymes. Other projects focus on the assembly of promiscuous activities into novel combinations that allow microbes to degrade a novel carbon source or bypass a metabolic block caused by a genetic lesion.
