Harry A. Dailey Professor of Microbiology and Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Professor Dailey received a B.A. from UCLA in 1972 and Ph.D. from UCLA in 1976. He was an American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Connecticut Health Center. He joined the faculty in the Department of Microbiology in 1980, and was appointed Acting Head in 1987 and Professor and Head in 1990. He was also the recipient of an NIH Research Career Development Award 1983-88. There are two major long-range goals for my laboratory's research. The first is to characterize at the biochemical and molecular level the terminal enzymes of the heme biosynthetic pathway and the second is to examine regulatory mechanisms of heme biosynthesis that exist in erythroid and non-erythroid cell types. An integral part of both of these goals is to understand at both a biochemical and cellular level the specific nature of the human genetic diseases variegate porphyria (VP), erythropoietic protoporphyria (ESPP), and the X-linked sideroblastic anemia. Our aims are to establish cell lines and animal models for all of these disorders in order to gain an understanding of why humans possessing these disorders exhibit variable penetrance, why symptomatic patients exhibit significantly different intensities of symptoms and why clinically documented differences exist between male and female patients. We are interested in biochemically characterizing the terminal enzymes of the pathway as they exist in both normal and porphyric individuals. With the cloning and bacterial expression of the human enzymes, it is possible to employ biophysical techniques in characterizing the enzymes. Current studies are directed at characterizing the substrate binding domains of the terminal two enzymes, ferrochelatase and protoporphyrinogen oxidase, and at examining the role of the iron sulfur cluster in ferrochelatase and the catalytic functioning of both enzymes. "Human Ferrochelatase is an Iron-Sulfur Protein," Dailey, H. A.; Finnegan, M. G.; Johnson, M. K. Biochemistry 1994, 33, 403-407. "Human Protoporphyrinogen Oxidase. Expression, Purification and Characterization of the Cloned Enzyme," Dailey, T. A.; Dailey, H. A. Prot. Sci. 1996, in press. E-mail contact: hdailey@arches.uga.edu