Chris and Rob collaborated with Hari Kamadurai in Brenda Schulman’s lab to help test their mechanistic predictions from structural and enzymatic work on the HECT type ubiquitin ligase Rsp5.  They found that in vitro, Rsp5 adopts a distinct architecture that coordinates substrate and the attached Ub so that particular lysines within the substrate become preferred.  The structural studies predicted a number of key residues required for this mechanistic model and these residues are indeed important for Rsp5 activity invivo and invitro.  Very cool, Hari.