Research
Probing challenging biological environments
Broadly speaking, our group uses organic chemistry to develop chemical tools that can interrogate biochemical environments that are otherwise challenging to probe. Many of our probes become reactive only after a unique biochemical environment has triggered the release of a reactive moiety. We are fascinated with questions of selectivity from the scale of small molecules, to proteins, to entire organs within an animal.
Chemical approaches to study dengue virus
A project that inspired much of the early work in the group focused on designing chemical probes that would be activated by similar chemical environments to those that trigger dengue virus to undergo conformational changes that facilitate viral entry into host cells. The triazabutadiene chemistry met the requirement of being pH-triggered and then protein-reactive.
Probing mosquito larva
After a mosquito has taken your blood, she uses it to develop eggs that she then deposits into water. If the conditions are right they hatch and the larva go through several life stages before becoming adults. We are developing chemical tools to unravel the mysteries of the larval gut with a long-term vision of creating new classes of larvicidal agents that are selective for the unique environment of larval guts.
Journey inside the cell
Several projects within the group are focused on the synthesis and utility of chemical probes that traverse the cellular membrane and selectively label proteins found within. A deeper level of selectivity is gained through organelle-specific probes. Once there we will team up with biologists to ask questions pertaining to protein-protein interactions, and post-translational modifications.
Bioorthogonal reaction development
Bioorthogonal reactions, those whose components are inert to a complex biological surrounding, have been a driving force behind modern chemical biology. We are working to develop new reactions and re-appropriate old ones in order to better probe the systems we are interested in.