Jenny England

Jenny England graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in Biochemistry and a M.S. in Chemistry from Virginia Tech University. After completion of her master’s, Jenny taught AP Chemistry at a STEM Charter School for two years. Although her teaching experiences were very rewarding and allowed her to positively influence future students in STEM fields, Jenny missed the excitement and challenges of a collegiate research environment and decided to pursue her PhD at Georgetown University. Jenny is currently in her third year of graduate school at Georgetown University. She is currently studying the allosteric regulation of Protein Kinase A (PKA) at the single molecule level in the Maillard laboratory. PKA regulates a multitude of cellular processes linked to cell growth, death, and disease. Her research involves the purification of the regulatory (R) and catalytic (C) subunit of PKA as two independent domains and as an engineered PKA chimera. The R-subunit will be unfolded by single molecule optical tweezers in the presence and absence of the C-subunit in trans and in the PKA chimera. Her studies will provide insight into the identification of the molecular origin of diseases due to mutations of PKA and investigate the effect of allosteric inhibitors on PKA function.