Undergraduate

Meera Kumanan (Class of ’20)

Structural basis for lipid binding and function by an evolutionarily conserved protein, Serum Amyloid A Serum amyloid A (SAA) is a plasma protein that transports lipids during inflammation. To explore SAA solution conformations and lipid-binding mechanism, we used hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry, lipoprotein reconstitution, amino acid sequence analysis, and molecular dynamics simulations. Solution conformations of […]

Patrick Williamson (Class of ’16)

Rapid Urinary Tract Infection Diagnostics by Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS):  Identification and Antibiotic Susceptibilities SERS spectra of 12 bacterial strains of urinary tract infection (UTI) clinical isolates grown and enriched from urine are reported. A partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) classification treatment of these SERS spectra results in strain level identification with >95% sensitivity and >99% specificity. The classification […]

Shane Devlin (Class of ’18)

Anomalous pH-Dependent Surface Adsorption of p-Methyl Benzoic Acid: Enhancement Due to Cooperative Adsorption Vibrational sum-frequency generation (SFG) spectroscopy is used to determine the surface pKa of p-methyl benzoic acid (pMBA) at the air–water interface by monitoring the carbonyl and carboxylate stretching modes over the pH range of 2 to 12. The SFG intensities of pMBA and […]

Paul Lemler (Class of ’13)

Reversible PCET and Ambient Catalytic Oxidative Alcohol Dehydrogenation by {V=O} Perfluoropinacolate Complexes An optimized procedure is described for the acquisition of 785 nm excited SERS spectra of dried bloodstains and shown to offer great potential for rapid, portable, highly sensitive and specific, confirmatory identification for forensic applications. Following extraction in 1 μL of 50% acetic […]

Amanda Arnoff (Class of ’17)

On the Way to a Trisanionic {Cu3O2} Core for Oxidase Catalysis: Evidence of an Asymmetric Trinuclear Precursor Stabilized by Perfluoropinacolate Ligands CuI complexes of the form K[(R3P)Cu(pinF)], in which (pinF)2− is the bidentate, oxygen‐donating ligand perfluoropinacolate, were synthesized and characterized. Low‐temperature oxygenation of the K[(R3P)Cu(pinF)(PR3)] species resulted in a trisanionic bis(μ3‐oxo) trinuclear copper(II,II,III) core characterized […]

Anna Impastato (Class of ’15), Jaime A. Duque (REU ’15)

Halocyclizations and Cycloisomerizations of Bisaryl 1,6-Diynes, Kyle R. Strom, Anna C. Impastato, Jaime A. Duque, and John K. Snyder, HeteroCycles, 2017, 95(2), 1184-1196 N-Sulfonamide tethered bisaryl 1,6-diynes underwent cyclization in the presence of Ga(III) trihalide to give mixtures of halocyclization (HC) and Friedel-Crafts (FC) cycloisomerization products. The ratio of products was found to be dependent […]

Douglas Ober (Class of ’16), Yining Jiang (Class of ’18)

Experimental maps of DNA structure at nucleotide resolution distinguish intrinsic from protein-induced DNA deformations, Robert N Azad, Dana Zafiropoulos, Douglas Ober, Yining Jiang, Tsu-Pei Chiu, Jared M Sagendorf, Remo Rohs, Thomas D Tullius, Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 46, Issue 5, 16 March 2018, Pages 2636–2647 Recognition of DNA by proteins depends on DNA sequence and […]

Shu Wang (Class of ’16)

Use of a Tyrosine Analogue To Modulate the Two Activities of a Nonheme Iron Enzyme OvoA in Ovothiol Biosynthesis, Cysteine Oxidation versus Oxidative C–S Bond Formation, Li Chen, Nathchar Naowarojna, Heng Song, Shu Wang, Jiangyun Wang, Zixin Deng, Changming Zhao, and Pinghua Liu, Journal of the American Chemical Society 2018 140 (13), 4604-4612 Ovothiol is […]

Melissa Quill (Class of ’19) and Meiling Xu (Class of ’19)

Mini-Review: Ergothioneine and Ovothiol Biosyntheses, an Unprecedented Trans-Sulfur Strategy in Natural Product Biosynthesis, Nathchar Naowarojna, Ronghai Cheng, Li Chen, Melissa Quill, Meiling Xu, Changming Zhao, and Pinghua Liu, Biochemistry 2018 57 (24), 3309-3325 As one of the most abundant elements on earth, sulfur is part of many small molecular metabolites and is key to their […]