Barry P. Rosen, PhD, professor and chairman of the WSU Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, was awarded at $1.7 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is part of the National Institutes of Health. The five-year award will fund a project entitled "Metal Binding Domains in Metalloregulatory Proteins." The goal of the study is to understand how cells recognize and detoxify heavy metals, such as cadmium and lead. As part of the research, Dr. Rosen's group recently solved by X-ray crystallography the structure of a transcriptional repressor that senses environmental lead and cadmium. For more on Dr. Rosen's work, look for upcoming news in Scribe, the quarterly newsletter for the WSU School of Medicine.