| Citation | Daniela Rhodes has made many fundamental contributions to the fields of nucleic acid structure, chromatin structure, the structure of zinc finger proteins and DNA recognition, and telomere structure. As a member of Aaron Klug's group, she provided key biochemistry for crystallizing and solving the 3D-structure of both tRNA and the nucleosome core. During this period she also independently generated several important biochemical results. As an independent group leader since 1983 and long ahead of the field, she provided some of the first evidence that chromatin structure is involved in transcriptional regulation, and further that transcribed chromatin has a structure different from that of repressed chromatin. She went on to become an internationally recognized leader in protein-nucleic acid recognition and telomere structure. She elucidated how classical zinc fingers and nuclear hormone receptors recognize DNA by solving the 3D-structure of a number of protein-DNA complexes. More recently she has focussed on telomeres and has obtained some of the first structural information in this important area of biology. The crystal structures of the yeast telomeric protein RAP1 in complex with telomeric DNA have provided a precise understanding of how double stranded telomeric repeats are recognized, and the structures of the human TRF1 and TRF2 have given important insights into the function and evolution of telomeric proteins. |