Using crystallography to answer questions of structure and function
Caroline Soliman discovered her love for lab work as an undergraduate studying biomedical science at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. She thrived on doing hands-on work to answer the question “What’s my goal, and how am I going to get there?”
The findings of Caroline Soliman’s team are crucial for understanding the function of carbohydrate-binding human antibodies as potential microbial therapeutics.
Now a graduate student at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, or RMIT, Soliman won a 2019 Journal of Biological Chemistry/Herbert Tabor Young Investigator Award for her work on the structural characterization of antibody candidates that recognize carbohydrates for immunotherapy for infection.
Soliman earned an honors degree at Monash University through the Burnet Institute. For her thesis, she worked with Paul Ramsland, now her dissertation mentor, to develop a peptide-based inhibitor to mimic the binding of a microbial protein to immunoglobulin A. The project sparked an interest in crystallography.
“I gained an appreciation for the importance of structure in terms of function,” she said.
After a short break from research, Soliman returned to Ramsland’s lab for her doctoral training at RMIT. Together, they crafted a project with translational benefits and an international collaboration with Gerald Pier of Harvard Medical School that would give Soliman the chance to develop her crystallography skills.
“My supervisor has been very supportive and encouraging,” she said, adding that Ramsland helped her navigate the roadblocks of learning crystallography, teaching her how to collect data from the Australian Synchrotron and walking her through the process of solving a crystal structure.
When not solving crystal structures, Soliman can be found in the kitchen baking cakes, tarts and other sweet treats. She also enjoys reading, swimming at the beach and spending time with her family in Melbourne.
After completing her Ph.D., Soliman hopes to pursue a career in research and to teach immunology.
“It’s really important to do something you enjoy,” she said.
Fighting antibiotic resistance with antibodies
Antibiotics are used to fight bacterial infections, but antibiotic resistance has created a need for alternative therapies. Many of the antibiotic-resistant bacteria prioritized for therapeutic development are known to form biofilms, sticky aggregations of microbes that act as an additional barrier against antibacterial therapies.
Therapeutic antibodies are a strong candidate to overcome both antibiotic resistance and barriers such as bacterial biofilms. Humans typically develop protective antibodies to bacterial carbohydrates as a result of infection, so researchers have focused on carbohydrate-binding antibodies. Specifically, the human antibody F598 is being tested in the clinical setting because it can elicit protective activities after binding to the microbial carbohydrate poly-N-acetyl-D-glucosamine, or PNAG, which is a polymer of N-acetyl-D-glucosamine, or GlcNAc, units.
To understand how this antibody targets PNAG, Caroline Soliman and colleagues defined the structural basis for recognition of PNAG by F598. They determined crystal structures for the antibody-binding fragment, or Fab, of F598 and its complexes with two carbohydrates, GlcNAc and a PNAG oligosaccharide. They found that the Fab binds to extracellular polysaccharide in biofilms and to PNAG on the surface of Staphylococcus aureus.
This was the first study to report the structural basis for human antibody recognition of PNAG.
Enjoy reading ASBMB Today?
Become a member to receive the print edition four times a year and the digital edition weekly.
Learn moreGet the latest from ASBMB Today
Enter your email address, and we’ll send you a weekly email with recent articles, interviews and more.
Latest in People
People highlights or most popular articles
ASBMB names 2025 fellows
American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology honors 24 members for their service to the society and accomplishments in research, education, mentorship, diversity and inclusion and advocacy.
When Batman meets Poison Ivy
Jessica Desamero had learned to love science communication by the time she was challenged to explain the role of DNA secondary structure in halting cancer cell growth to an 8th-grade level audience.
The monopoly defined: Who holds the power of science communication?
“At the official competition, out of 12 presenters, only two were from R2 institutions, and the other 10 were from R1 institutions. And just two had distinguishable non-American accents.”
In memoriam: Donald A. Bryant
He was a professor emeritus at Penn State University who discovered how cyanobacteria adapt to far-red light and was a member of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology for over 35 years.
Yes, I have an accent — just like you
When the author, a native Polish speaker, presented her science as a grad student, she had to wrap her tongue around the English term “fluorescence cross-correlation microscopy.”
Professorships for Booker; scholarship for Entzminger
Squire Booker has been appointed to two honorary professorships at Penn State University. Inayah Entzminger received a a BestColleges scholarship to support their sixth year in the biochemistry Ph.D. program at CUNY.