POTSDAM -- SUNY Potsdam Chemistry Professor Dr. Fadi Bou-Abdallah has received a research grant award of $387,030 from the National Science Foundation for work over the next three years to better understand the body's storage and release of iron, and how imbalances in those mechanisms may lead to iron-related diseases, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Bou-Abdallah and his students have pioneered a unique method of creating a synthetic protein called isoferritin, allowing for study that was previously not possible in the eight decades following the discovery of the isoferritin nanostructure-assembly and its iron cores.

Ferritins are proteins that store and release iron, regulating its presence in most animals.

The study of ferritins' internal mechanisms has been hampered by the lack of a system for artificially creating sufficient quantities of isoferritin.

The SUNY Potsdam chemistry professor has overcome this hurdle using a unique plasmid capable of producing large amounts of these biomolecules.

Many research groups around the world have previously attempted this process unsuccessfully, Bou-Abdallah said.