For years, Fox Chase Cancer Center researcher Eileen Jaffe's findings on the behavior of a new mutant enzyme have been met with disbelief by the protein community. When she presented at conferences, people told her "proteins just don't do" what she claims they do. When Jaffe suggested to a researcher after his conference presentation that he might be dealing with a similar phenomenon to the one she claims to see, he told her she was a troublemaker.
Jaffe first encountered the mutant enzyme in the British Journal of Haematology (106:931-7, 1999), which described the case of a Swedish girl born in 1996. The girl carried a novel mutation that produced an alternate version of an enzyme called porphobilinogen synthase (PBGS), vital in the heme biosynthesis pathway.
Jaffe had been studying PBGS for more than 10 years, intrigued by its high affinity for binding lead, and decided it would be interesting ...
