Swarts Lab
Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry | Central Michigan University
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Research overview and recent highlights
Research overview and recent highlights
We develop chemical tools for studying and targeting cell envelope components in mycobacteria, which cause tuberculosis and other diseases. We focus on creating chemical probes and inhibitors of the mycobacterial outer membrane (stained in the image above), which is a target for diagnostic and therapeutic development.
Reviews on probes for bacterial glycans (Chem. Rev.) and mycobacterial lipids (COCB)
Lab news
Lab news
2/08/2023: Collaborative paper
We contributed to a review paper by the Conway virology lab focused on emerging targets for mosquito insecticide development, including trehalose metabolism.
M. J. Conway*, D. P. Haslitt, and B. M. Swarts. Targeting Aedes aegypti Metabolism with Next-Generation Insecticides. Viruses, 2023, 15, 469.
11/15/2022: Outreach events
As part of our community college outreach program, Ben gave STEM career/research presentations and lab tours to chemistry students from the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College, Mid Michigan Community College, and AP chemisty students from Mount Pleasant High School. Our students also participated in a number CMU College of Science and Engineering events this year (pictured).
11/8/2022: Paper in ACIE
BCMB Ph.D. student Nicholas Banahene and undergraduate biochemistry student Dan Gepford combined efforts to develop a bright far-red fluorogenic dye that rapidly and specifically labels live mycobacteria, published in Angew. Chem. Int. Edit. The probe enabled a simple drug-susceptibility assay for M. tuberculosis, thus it potentially has applications as a tuberculosis diagnostic tool. We teamed up with collaborators on this study, including the Van Nieuwenhze lab at Indiana University, the Siegrist lab at UMass Amherst, and Andrés Obregón-Henao at Colorado State University.
11/8/2022: Collaborative paper in eLife
We contributed to a paper in eLife from the Rego lab at Yale University, in which BCMB Ph.D. student Kyle Biegas used his photo-crosslinking trehalose probes to help characterize the function PgfA, an essential protein proposed to be involved in glyoclipid trafficking in mycobacteria. This paper was highlighted by Nat. Rev. Microbiol.
K. R. Gupta, C. M. Gwin, K. C. Rahlwes, K. J. Biegas, C. Wang, J. H. Park, J. Liu, B. M. Swarts, Y. S Morita, and E. H. Rego. An essential periplasmic protein coordinates lipid trafficking and is required for asymmetric polar growth in mycobacteria. eLife, 2022, 11, e80395.
10/31/2022: Fall conferences
In late August, several of us presented research at the ACS National Meeting in Chicago, IL, including Ben, Nicholas, Daniel, and Izzy, other group members attended, and we got to catch up with group alumna Jessica Groenevelt, now a Ph.D. student at Wayne State University, who also gave a great presentation! In October, we attended the 17th annual Midwest Carbohydrate and Glycobiology at Wayne State University, where Ben and Priscilla gave talks and several students presented posters. Priscilla won a best oral presentation award and Kyle Biegas won a best poster award at MCGS. A few students also presented at the ACS Midland Section Fall Scientific Meeting in October.
Group at ACS Meeting, Chicago
Dinner at ACS Meeting, Chicago
Priscilla speaking at MCGS, Detroit
10/26/2022: Paper in ACS Infect. Dis.
We worked with Sloan Siegrist's lab at UMass Amherst to create and apply a new probe for studying multiple, linked steps in the biosynthesis and recycling pathway of the mycobacterial outer membrane. This study, titled "A Bifunctional Chemical Reporter for in Situ Analysis of Cell Envelope Glycan Recycling in Mycobacteria," was led by Amol Pohane from UMass and Devin Moore from CMU, with several other contributors.
10/4/2022: Carolyn Bertozzi wins the Nobel Prize!
Congratulations to Ben's postdoctoral advisor Carolyn Bertozzi on winning the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, alongside Barry Sharpless and Morton Meldal, for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry!
10/1/2022: New fall students
A few new undergraduate students are joining the lab this semester, including Emily Maskill, Jessica Tauriainen, Evan Siemienkiewicz, and Carson Bush. Welcome everyone!
07/25/2022: Priscilla advances to candidacy
Priscilla Dzigba, BCMB Ph.D. student being co-advised by Dr. Mallary Wacker, passed her qualifying exam and has advanced to Ph.D. candidacy. Congratulations Priscilla!
07/1/2022: Nicholas to Merck co-op
BCMB Ph.D. student Nicholas Banahene is heading off to do a 6-month doctoral co-op position at the Merck Exploratory Science Center in Cambridge, MA.
06/30/2022: Summer research
Nearly the entire group was on campus for summer research, including the graduate students (Nicholas, Kyle, Karishma, Priscilla, Ulysses, Zigli, and Kingsley) and most of the undergraduate students (Daniel, Izzy, Ekene, Emma). We even found some time for lawn sports and disc golf.
06/14/2022: In memory of Anne Poston
Anne Poston, lab technician in the group from 2015-2020, passed away on June 9, 2022. Anne was an integral part of our group and made important contributions to many research projects, and she will be remembered as a wonderful friend and exceptionally supportive, kind, and dedicated mentor to many students.
05/12/2022: New 500 MHz NMR
Due to generous support from an NSF MRI grant, we have a newly installed and operational Bruker Avance 500 MHz NMR at CMU. The new unit is pictured below.
05/7/2022: Congratulations graduating students!
Congratulations to our graduating undergraduates, who have completed their capstone research projects and theses: Katie Sowell (BS chemistry), who also served as the ACS student group president, will begin as a lab technician at the University of Michigan; Blake Holdwick (BS biochemistry), a CMU Summer Scholar awardee, will begin a position a Honeywell in Muskegon, MI; Nicole Henson (BS chemistry), will start a position at Pfizer in Kalamazoo, MI; and Justin Hassen (BS biochemistry) is off to begin medical school at Wayne State University. Congratulations all, we wish you all well!
At the same time, we are welcoming new undergraduate student Ekene Osiri.
Blake Holdwick
Nicole Henson
04/04/2022: Spring conferences
The group attended the ACS Spring National Meeting in San Diego, our first in-person conference in over two years! Karishma Kalera gave an oral presentation and several undergraduate students presented posters, including Katie Sowell, Blake Holdwick, Izzy Gaidhane, and Daniel Swanson. Ben co-organized a symposium on chemical tools for dissecting microbial glycobiology.
Undergraduate students Justin Hassen and Nicole Henson are presenting posters at CMU's SRCEE research conference in April.
02/21/2022: ACS student group on the ice
CM Life highlighted the ACS student group's outing to Martin Ice Arena here in Mt. Pleasant. Our lab has several undergraduate researchers who serve as officers in the ACS student group, including Katie Sowell (former president), Emma Doederlein (current president), Izzy Gaidhane (public relations), and Daniel Swanson (student government association representative).
02/15/2022: Collaborative paper
We contributed a paper in Scientific Reports from the Kalscheuer lab (Heinrich Heine University, Germany) that used trehalose inhibitors and probes to help uncover the function of a mycomembrane protein in Mycobacterium tuberculosis:
M. R. Babu Sait, H. Koliwer-Brandl, J. A. Stewart, B. M. Swarts, M. Jacobsen, T. R. Ioerger, and R. Kalscheuer*. PPE51 mediates uptake of trehalose across the mycomembrane of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Sci. Rep. 2022, 122, 3336–3413.
02/11/2022: Student recognition
BCMB Ph.D. student Priscilla Dzigba was recognized by CMU for International Day of Women and Girls in STEM!
01/24/2022: New BCMB student
Welcome to new BCMB doctoral student Kingsley Agu.
12/15/2021: Review article in Chem. Rev.
BCMB PhD student Nicholas Banahene and former postdoc Herbert Kavunja contributed to a review article in Chemical Reviews, "Chemical reporters for bacterial glycans: development and applications." This paper provides a comprehensive look at how bacterial glycan-targeting chemical reporters are designed, synthesized, and evaluated, how they operate from a mechanistic standpoint, and how this information informs their judicious and innovative application. It covers probes for peptidoglycan, lipopolysaccharide, glycoproteins, teichoic acids, and capsular polysaccharides, as well as mycobacterial glycans, including trehalose glycolipids and arabinan-containing glycoconjugates.
12/15/2021: A year of virtual seminars and conferences
The group's conference activity unfortunately dwindled in the last year-plus due to the pandemic, but we have tried to keep current in the field and present our work in virtual settings, including presentations by students at virtual ACS National Meetings, NIH & FDA Glycoscience Research Day, Midland Section ACS Fall Scientific Meeting, and CMU SRCEE. Ben gave virtual talks for Wadsworth Center/University of Albany, University of Southern California, ACS CARB/GlycoNet symposium, ACS National Meetings, and the NIH NIGMS symposium on tools bacterial polysaccharides. Ben and Nicholas will give virtual presentations at Pacifichem 2021 as well. We are certainly looking forward to returning to in-person events!
09/01/2021: 500 MHz NMR spectrometer on the way
We are very grateful to have been awarded an NSF MRI grant to obtain a new NMR spectrometer for the CMU Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, "MRI: Acquisition of an NMR Spectrometer for Research and Training at Central Michigan University." A Bruker 500 MHz NMR spectrometer will be installed in our NMR facility in early 2022.
08/01/2021: Welcome new students
We welcome undergraduate chemistry major Nicole Henson, who will be synthesizing halogenated trehalose derivatives, and undergraduate student Andy Kruskamp, who will be synthesizing mycolic acid derivatives.
08/01/2021: Collaborative NIH grants
We are excited to contribute to an NIH R21 grant awarded to the Siegrist lab (UMass Amherst), "Host proteins that interact with the BCG cell envelope," and to an NIH R01 grant awarded to the DeBosch lab (Washington University St. Louis, School of Medicine), "Leveraging glucose transport and the adaptive fasting response to modulate hepatic metabolism."
07/30/2021: Summer research
Nearly the entire group was on campus for summer research, including the graduate students (Nicholas, Kyle, Karishma, Priscilla, Ulysses, Kwaku, and Zigli) and most of the undergraduate students (Katie, Daniel, Izzy, Emma, and Blake). We also completed our annual float down the Chippewa River, which largely proceeded without incident!
07/23/2021: Kwaku M.S. thesis defense
Chemistry M.S. student Kwaku Obeng successfully defended his thesis, "Chemical Synthesis of Azido and Amino Inositol Analogues as Potential Inhibitors of Mycobacterium." Congratulations Kwaku! Thanks to thesis committee members Drs. Anton Jensen and Wenjun Du. Best wishes to Kwaku has he moves on to the chemistry PhD program at the University of Maryland.
07/19/2021: Chapter in Mycobacteria Protocols
BCMB PhD student Nicholas Banahene wrote a detailed protocol chapter, "Metabolic Labeling of Live Mycobacteria with Trehalose-Based Probes," for the go-to handbook for experimental mycobacteriology, Mycobacteria Protocols. An image from our lab depicting mycobacterial cells labeled with a trehalose probe was chosen for the cover of the 4th edition of this book.
07/01/2021: Review article in Curr. Opin. Chem. Biol.
BCMB PhD student Kyle Biegas contributed to a review article in a special issue of Current Opinion in Chemical Biology focused on lipids, "Chemical probes for tagging mycobacterial lipids." This paper discusses the unique lipids of mycobacteria and the chemical probes that have been developed and applied to better understand their contributions to mycobacterial physiology and virulence.
05/10/2021: Congratulations Isaac and Madi, welcome Emma
We congratulate Isaac Angera and Madi Saunders on the completion of their theses and degrees in biochemistry! Good luck Isaac in pursuing your PhD in chemistry at the University of Notre Dame, and good luck Madi in medical school at Wayne State University.
Thanks to Isaac (pictured) for serving the American Chemical Society student group at CMU, including as its president, and additional congratulations on two recent awards: CMU College of Science and Engineering Dean’s Scholar Award for Undergraduate Research and Midland ACS Section Outstanding Undergraduate Biochemist. Prior to starting at Notre Dame in the fall, Isaac will also be doing an internship in medicinal chemistry at Zoetis in Kalamazoo.
As Isaac and Madi depart, we also welcome new biochemistry major Emma Doederlein to the lab.
03/19/2021: Scenes from the lab
CMU campus photographer Adam Sparkes dropped by the lab to capture graduate students Karishma, Ulysses, Kwaku, and Priscilla at work:
01/30/2021: Collaborative paper
We contributed a paper in mBio from the Siegrist lab (UMass Amherst) that used trehalose probes to help uncover a novel mycomembrane remodeling mechanism in mycobacteria:
A. A. Pohane, C. R. Carr, J. Garhyan, B. M. Swarts, and M. S. Siegrist.* Trehalose recycling promotes energy-efficient biosynthesis of the mycobacterial cell envelope, mBio. 2021, 12, e02801–20.
01/10/2021: Welcome new students
Joining the lab are Izzy Gaidhane, undergraduate biochemistry major, and Zigli Abdulai, who is starting in the MS chemistry program.
11/20/2020: Advancing to PhD candidacy
Congratulations to our first three BCMB doctoral students for passing their qualifying exams and advancing to PhD candidacy!
Karishma Kalera
Nicholas Banahene
Kyle Biegas
10/06/2020: BSL-3 facility opens
CMU's new biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) facility will enable research and graduate student training focused on infectious diseases, including tuberculosis. Thanks to the many people at CMU (and beyond) who helped to get this facility ready to go live.
09/05/2020: Feature article in Chem. Commun.
BCMB PhD student Karishma Kalera and biochemistry major Alicyn Stothard contributed to a perspective article in ChemComm that we wrote with collaborator Pete Woodruff, "The role of chemoenzymatic synthesis in advancing trehalose analogues as tools for combatting bacterial pathogens." This paper discusses the importance of trehalose metabolism to the virulence of bacteria, and how synthetic trehalose derivatives can be used to probe, manipulate, or target these pathways.
09/01/2020: New students
Welcome to the BCMB PhD program Ulysses Johnson, who completed his BS in biochemistry at CMU while studying with virologist MJ Conway. Ulysses will be developing tools to probe and inhibit trehalose uptake and intracellular utilization in bacteria. In addition, biochemistry major Daniel Swanson and chemistry major Katie Sowell have joined the team and will focus their undergraduate research on chemical and chemoenzymatic synthesis of bacterial sugar analogues.
07/15/2020: Summer research with adjustments
Despite the pandemic bringing research to a halt in the spring and upending our usual summer research period, the students responded by preparing protocols for working safely in the lab, restarting research working in shifts, and putting together PPE donations (including respirators from the BSL-3 facility) for the local pandemic response.
Although our annual summer group outings and community college summer research outreach program were canceled this year, we look forward to restarting these traditions soon.
07/01/2020: Collaborative NIH grant
We are grateful to play a small part developing degradation-resistant trehalose analogues in an NIH R01 grant awarded to the DeBosch lab (Washington University St. Louis, School of Medicine), "Treating secondary cardiomyopathies by mimicking the adaptive hepatic glucose fasting response."
05/30/2020: New paper in J. Am. Chem. Soc.
"Photoactivatable glycolipid probes for identifying mycolate–protein interactions in live mycobacteria," led by postdoc Herbert Kavunja (left for IASO Therapeutics in 2018) and current BCMB PhD student Kyle Biegas, was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. This paper reports a new probe that embeds in outer membrane glycolipids of live mycobacteria and enables capture of proteins, representing a tool for elucidating and targeting the mycomembrane proteome.
This paper was highlighted by JACS Spotlights, Chembites, and Synlett.
05/10/2020: Congratulations graduating students
Huge congratulations to Dan Gepford, Nik Kambitsis, and Cam Lee on completing their undergraduate theses and biochemistry degrees, despite the usual path to the finish line being disrupted by the pandemic. We wish you well as you leave Mount Pleasant and begin your graduate programs.
Dan Gepford (pictured), who began in the lab through our community college summer outreach program and was also a McNair Scholar at CMU, received the CMU Provost’s Award for Undergraduate Research and the CMU Outstanding Organic Chemist Award this spring. Congratulations Dan!
03/19/2020: NIH grant renewed
Our R15 grant from the National Insitutes of Health, "Chemoenzymatic Synthesis of Trehalose Analogues as Tools for Investigating Bacterial Pathogens," has been generously renewed.
01/30/2020: Collaborative papers
Karishma Kalera and Alicyn Stothard contributed to a paper from the Conway lab (CMU, College of Medicine) and Alicyn Stothard contributed to a paper from the DeBosch lab (Washington University St. Louis, School of Medicine), both focused on using trehalose analogues to manipulate cellular/organismal metabolism, albeit in very different contexts:
A. D. Marten, A. I Stothard, K. Kalera, B. M. Swarts, M. J. Conway*. Validamycin A Delays Development and Prevents Flight in Aedes aegypti (Diptera: Culicidae), J. Med. Entymol. 2020, 57, 1096–1103.
Y. Zhang, N. Shaikh, J. L. Ferey, U. D. Wankhade, S. V. Chintapalli, C. B. Higgins, J. R. Crowley, M. R. Heitmeier, A. I. Stothard, B. Mihi, M. R. Good, T. Higashiyama, B. M. Swarts, P. W. Hruz, K. Shankar, P. I. Tarr, B. J. DeBosch*. Lactotrehalose, an analog of trehalose, increases energy metabolism without promoting Clostridioides difficile infection in mice, Gastroenterology, 2020, 158, 1402–1416.e2.
01/15/2020: New paper in J. Org. Chem.
"Ferrier carbocyclization-mediated synthesis of enantiopure azido inositol analogues," led by MS student Alex Ausmus, was published in the Journal of Organic Chemistry. This paper reports a new approach to synthesizing azido inositols that capitalizes on the classic Ferrier carbocyclization. In addition to Alex, numerous students contributed to this project over several years, including CMU undergraduates Max Hogue, Tina Bednarz, and Sarah Rundell, and community college outreach student Justin Snyder. The compounds reported are being developed as possible metabolic labeling probes for mycobacterial glycoconjugates.
01/15/2020: New BCMB PhD student
Welcome to the BCMB PhD program Priscilla Dzigba, who will be doing a collaborative project with CMU immunologist Dr. Mallary Wacker. Priscilla will be developing tools to study and manipulate the immune response to mycobacterial infections.
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