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...Dr. Shoulders carried out his PhD studies under Professor Ronald T. Raines at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received a B.S. in chemistry from Virginia Tech in 2004.
Dr. Shoulders' current research interests involve understanding at a fundamental level how the cell remodels itself to address challenges to protein homeostasis, elucidating the pathophysiology of protein folding-related diseases with poorly defined etiology, and targeting the biological processes uncovered for the development of first-in-class small molecule drugs. |
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... This kinetic enhancement allows site-specific protein labeling to be performed on the surface of living cells with only 10–40 μm CuI/CuII (see scheme). Detection sensitivity was also increased for CuAAC detection of alkyne-modified proteins and RNA. To read the paper click here |
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The Awards Committee of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s (RSC) Organic Division has selected Professor Timothy F. Jamison for the 2012 RSC Merck Award. Professor Jamison was selected for his creative contributions to reaction development and natural-product synthesis, including pioneering work on cascade cyclizations, nickel-catalyzed carbon–carbon bond-forming processes, and flow chemistry. |
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Robert G. Griffin, Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. >> |
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ESSIGMANN APPOINTED AS NEW DIRECTOR OF CEHS
John Essigmann, William R and Betsy P. Leitch Professor in Residence and a Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Biological Engineering, is the next Director of the Center for Environmental Health Sciences (CEHS), effective April 1, 2012. Professor Essigmann is a long service and highly regarded faculty member in CEHS whose research is at the interface of chemistry, biology and public health, specializing on the mechanisms by which cells respond to DNA damage. Using synthetic methods, novel DNA damage products are prepared and then cloned into genomes of viruses. Following replication of the damaged viruses in cells, he is able to determine if the lesions studied will be mutagenic or toxic to the host. Over a hundred DNA lesions of relevance to environmental toxicology or drug development have been characterized in this system. He is on the editorial boards of six journals and had more than180 research publications, patents and books dealing with nucleic acid damage, repair, mutation and evolution. He serves on the advisory boards of six private companies and more than a dozen academic departments and centers. He is the co-founder and Scientific Advisory Board member of Koronis Pharmaceuticals. Professor Essigmann has stepped down as Associate Department Head of the Department of Chemistry, a position he held from July 1, 2010. In announcing his resignation to take up the CES appointment Sylvia Ceyer, Department Head of Chemistry, acknowledged the department's appreciation for his hard work, wise counsel and dedication to the department. |
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The MIT Energy Initiative has awarded Professor Mircea Dincă seed funding for his energy research in Designer Microporous Materials for Water Desalination and Adsorption Heat Pumps.
MITEI, established in September 2006, is an Institute-wide initiative designed to help transform the global energy system to meet the needs of the future and to help build a bridge to that future by improving today's energy systems. |
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Swager group: Proteases are over-expressed in most cancers and proteolytic activity has been shown to be a viable marker for cancer imaging in vivo. The Swager group has developed a new method for detecting proteases based upon organic nanoparticles (a). The nanoparticles are structurally complex and are formed from the assembly of penta-block copolymers, which have a organic semiconducting luminescent core, a hydrophilic outer shell for water solubility, and a reactive segment for crosslinking with peptides (a). The particles are effectively compressed by the crosslinked peptide network (c) and the particles are quenched with a low luminescence. Cleavage of the peptides effectively relieves the strain and allows the particles to expand and an an increase in luminescence is observed (b). |
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Tokmakoff Lab: Faster way to probe proteins
Infrared spectroscopy allows scientists to analyze protein structure on an ultrafast timescale. more>> |
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2012 Barry M. Goldwater Scholar
P. Bryan Changala is a junior majoring in chemistry and physics who plans to pursue a PhD in physical chemistry, in order to carry out research in molecular spectroscopy and teach physical chemistry at the university level. Bryan has been carrying out research in the Field Group since his freshman year at MIT, studying small molecule gas-phase spectroscopy.
The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program was established by Congress in 1986 to honor Senator Barry M. Goldwater, who served his country for 56 years as a soldier and statesman, including 30 years of service in the U.S. Senate. The purpose of the Goldwater Foundation is to provide a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians, and engineers by awarding scholarships to college students who intend to pursue careers in these fields. |
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NELSON RECEIVES LIPPINCOTT AWARD
Professor Keith A. Nelson is the 2012 recipient of the Ellis R. Lippincott Award in Vibrational Spectroscopy from the Optical Society of America.Nelson receives the award for his innovations in the development of impulsive stimulated Raman scattering and its applications to the ultrafast vibrational spectroscopy of phonons and intermolecular liquid dynamics. This award was established in 1975 by OSA, the Coblentz Society and the Society for Applied Spectroscopy to honor the unique contributions of Ellis R. Lippincott to the field of vibrational spectroscopy. It is presented to an individual who has made significant contributions to vibrational spectroscopy as judged by his or her influence on other scientists.
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Lippard to be recognized with Sacconi Medal
The Inorganic Chemistry Division of the Italian Chemical Society together with the Luigi Sacconi Foundation, on the occasion of the annual meeting of the Division, awards the Luigi Sacconi Medal to a scientist (Italian or foreigner) who has obtained particularly significant results in Inorganic Chemistry, the field in which Luigi Sacconi gave outstanding contributions. An interesting biography of Professor Sacconi can be read here.
Stephen J. Lipppard, Arthur Amos Noyes Professor of Chemistry, will be honored with the Luigi Sacconi Medal for his outstanding work on cis-Pt and the mechanism of its action. The award ceremony will take place at the annual meeting of the Division in Florence in June 2012. |
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Nicolas Boyer of the Movassaghi group has developed a concise and stereoselective Friedel–Crafts-based strategy to provide an efficient multigram-scale access to the C3-(3'-indolyl)hexahydropyrroloindole substructure, a molecular foundation present in a significant subset of epipolythiodiketopiperazine natural alkaloids.The first-generation solution to (+)-gliocladin B involved the stereoselective formation of (+)-12-deoxybionectin A, a plausible biosynthetic precursor. The synthesis clarified the C15 stereochemistry of (+)-gliocladin B and allowed its full structure confirmation. Further studies of a versatile dihydroxylated diketopiperazine provided a concise and efficient synthesis of (+)-gliocladin B as well as access to (+)-gliocladin C. |
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Freeing radicals from their negative connotations
Killian Award recipient JoAnne Stubbe says some free radicals can be good for you.
For biochemist JoAnne Stubbe, “radical” is a word with many associations.
In the late 1960s, Stubbe was a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, where student demonstrators picketed against the Vietnam War. She recalls that at the time, radicals were seen as protestors who were “highly reactive, that one had difficulty controlling and that wreaked havoc on everything they interacted with.” more>> |
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Visualising molecular juggling within a B12-dependent methyltransferase complex
Kung, Y., Ando, N., Doukov, T.I., Blasiak, L.C., Bender, G., Seravalli, J., Ragsdale, S.W., and Drennan, C.L.
Nature AOP March 14, 2012 DOI: 10.1038/nature10916
Methylation chemistry is ubiquitous and vital for cellular functions, from transcriptional regulation in humans to the ability of acetogens to live on carbon dioxide. This week in Nature, the Drennan laboratory in collaboration with the Ragsdale laboratory at the University of Michigan present the long-awaited X-ray structure of all protein components required for the methyl transfer from folic acid (vitamin B9) to cobalamin (vitamin B12), a reaction necessary for maintaining pools of methyl donor S-adenosylmethionine as well for acetogenesis.They find that the methyl transfer between these B vitamins requires a large conformational change that appears to be promoted by folate binding. Amazingly, this dramatic conformational change occurs in the crystal, as in crystallo spectroscopic data demonstrate enzymatic turnover that requires unprecedented movements within a crystal lattice.
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Designer Interfaces for High Efficiency Organic Solar Cells
Graduate Student Jose Lobez and Postdoctorate Trisha Andrew (PhD MIT 2011) working with Professors Swager (MIT Chemistry) and Bulovic (MIT EECS) have demonstrated a general method for the design of organic solar cells with greater than 30% increases in power conversion efficiencies (PCEs).
Small quantities of designer materials assemble at interfaces wherein the charge carriers in organic photovoltaics are formed and prevent recombination events that are presently a factor limiting the efficiency of organic solar cells. |
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| Twelve members of the MIT Corporation and 10 faculty members, including chemistry professor Timothy M. Swager, have been named to a Presidential Search Committee tasked with identifying a successor to President Susan Hockfield.
Additionally, three undergraduate and three graduate students have been named to a Student Advisory Committee that will assist in the search.
On Feb. 16, Hockfield announced her intention to step down as president following more than seven years of service. She will remain as president until a successor takes office.
“I am pleased that we have quickly formed this Presidential Search Committee and that we are moving ahead with this search,” says John S. Reed ’61, SM ’65, chairman of the MIT Corporation. “We have gathered an impressive and insightful team of individuals — with diverse opinions, positions and experiences.”
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Professor Alice Y. Ting, Ellen Swallow Richards Chair, has been selected to receive the Vilcek Foundation Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science.
The Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise recognizes foreign-born artists and scientists who have demonstrated exceptional creativity and originality in the early stages of their careers. Two $25,000 prizes, one in the field of biomedical science and one in a category of the arts or humanities designated by the Foundation, are awarded each year.
The cash award, accompanied by a certificate of recognition created by designer Stefan Sagmeister, is presented to each winner of the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise during the Foundation’s annual awards dinner in New York City. The Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise was established to encourage and support the artistic and scientific achievements of young immigrants who often face significant challenges in their early careers, and to increase awareness of the notable contributions made by foreign-born scholars and artists in the United States.
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On Wednesday, February 8, the MIT/Harvard Center for Magnetic Resonance (CMR) took delivery of their second 800 MHz (18.8 Tesla) NMR magnet. The magnet has an 89 mm bore, so that it can easily be used for low temperature, magic angle spinning (MAS) experiments that yield high-resolution spectra of solid samples.It will be used for spectroscopy of a variety of biological samples such as membrane or amyloid proteins, ribosomes, etc.The magnet is shielded and it is the first of its kind to have a low temperature refrigerator so that the helium boil-off rate will be essentially zero. Finally, the system features a superconducting sweep coil that will permit it to be used together with a 527 GHz gyrotron ( a high frequency microwave source) to enhance signal intensities by factors of ~100 via dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) experiments. |
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Diels-Alder Cycloaddition for Fluorophore Targeting to Specific Proteins inside Living Cells
D. S. Liu, A. Tangpeerachaikul, R. Selvaraj, M. T. Taylor, J. M. Fox, A. Y. Ting
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2011, Just Accepted Manuscript
DOI: 10.1021/ja209325n The Ting Lab, in collaboration with the Fox Lab at the University of Delaware, recently reported the application of a Diels-Alder cycloaddition between a tetrazine and a trans-cyclooctene for live-cell fluorescence imaging of proteins. This fast and bioorthogonal reaction extends Ting Lab’s PRIME technology, for Probe Incorporation Mediated by Enzymes, to the specific targeting of green and red fluorophores to proteins inside the cell. Previously PRIME was limited to blue, coumarin-type fluorophores because larger molecules cannot be accommodated by the ligase component of this technology. In this new scheme, generic fluorophores are targeted to proteins marked with a functional handle by the ligase, via the cycloaddition reaction. |
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Stephen J. Lippard, Arthur Amos Noyes Professor of Chemistry, has been selected to receive the 2012 Christopher J. Frederickson Prize for Research in the Neurobiology of Zinc. Professor Lippard receives the prize jointly with James O. McNamara, M.D, and the Carl R. Deane Professor at Duke University, with whom he co-authored a paper entitled, “Vesicular Zinc Promotes Presynaptic and Inhibits Postsynaptic Long-Term Potentiation of Mossy Fiber-CA3 Synapse,” in Neuron, Volume 71, Issue 6, 1116-1126, 22 September 2011.
Professors Lippard and McNamara will be presented with their prize by Dr. Frederickson himself at the 3rd International Society for Zinc Biology Conference in Melbourne, Australia in January 2012. The executive committee of the IZSB honors Dr. Frederickson for his lifetime research in the field of zinc neurobiology, and his seminal contributions to the foundation of the field. |
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Searching for DNA lesions: Structural evidence for lower and higher-affinity DNA binding conformations of human alkyladenine DNA glycosylase (AAG)
Jeremy W. Setser, Gondichatnahalli M. Lingaraju, C. Ainsley Davis, Leona D. Samson, Catherine L. Drennan
Biochemistry
doi: 10.1021/bi201484k
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/bi201484k
published online December 13, 2011 To efficiently repair DNA, human alkyladenine DNA glycosylase (AAG) must search the million-fold excess of unmodified DNA bases to find a handful of DNA lesions. Such a search can be facilitated by the ability of glycosylases, like AAG, to interact with DNA using two affinities: a lower-affinity interaction in a searching process, and a higher-affinity interaction for catalytic repair. The Drennan Lab, in collaboration with the lab of Prof. Leona Samson in Biological Engineering, has solved a crystal structure of this human DNA repair protein that allows us to investigate, for the first time, a lower-affinity depiction of this enzyme. By combining this new insight with existing biochemical and structural data, we are able to consider the big picture question of how DNA binding proteins find their binding sites in the vast expanse of the genome. |
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Imaging Protein-Protein Interactions inside Living Cells via Interaction-Dependent Fluorophore Ligation.
Slavoff SA, Liu DS, Cohen JD, Ting AY.
J Am Chem Soc. 2011;133(49):19769-76.
The Ting Lab recently developed ID-PRIME, or Interaction-Dependent PRobe Incorporation Mediated by Enzymes, a new imaging-based reporter of protein-protein interactions in living cells. The coumarin ligase enzyme LplA is fused to a protein of interest, and LplA′s peptide substrate, LAP, is fused to its interaction partner. Only if the proteins interact do LplA and LAP associate, resulting in coumarin labeling and blue cellular fluorescence. The system is engineered to provide low background in the absence of an interaction and has advantages over existing methods including a short labeling time. |
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Sharpening the Lines
New advance could lead to even smaller features in the constant quest for more compact, faster microchips. Trisha Andrew (PhD '10 Swager Group) and postdoc in RLE is a co-author of a paper that describes a way of creating finer lines on chips. >> |
A glow of recognition
New detectors developed at MIT could provide easy visual identification of toxins or pathogens. The Dincă Lab has developed a new way of revealing the presence of specific chemicals — whether toxins, disease markers, pathogens or explosives. The system visually signals the presence of a target chemical by emitting a fluorescent glow.>> |
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Hamill, M.J., Jost, M., Wong, C.,
Elliott, S.J., and Drennan, C.L.
Flavin-Induced Oligomerization in Escherichia
coli Adaptive Response Protein AidB.
Biochemistry, 2011, 50 (46), pp 10159-10169
The process known as "adaptive response" allows Escherichia coli to survive stress induced by a class of highly mutagenic compounds called DNA alkylating agents. Four proteins are upregulated during the adaptive response, including the flavin-binding protein AidB, the function of which is still largely unknown. In a recent study, the groups of Professor Cathy Drennan at MIT and Professor Sean Elliott at Boston University report the biophysical- characterization of AidB.
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| Using a wide spectrum of techniques including fluorescence anisotropy, analytical ultra-centrifugation, and X-ray crystallography, the researchers demonstrate that AidB undergoes an interesting
flavin-dependent transition in oligomerization state. These results provide strong evidence that flavin plays a structural role in the formation of an AidB tetramer, with potential functional implications. |
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Despite the large interchromophore distances imposed by coordination to metal ions, a carboxylate analogue of tetraphenylethylene anchored by Zn2+ and Cd2+ ions inside MOFs shows fluorescence lifetimes in line with those of close-packed molecular aggregates. Turn-on fluorescence by coordinative ligation in a porous matrix is a powerful approach that may lead to new materials made from chromophores with molecular rotors. The potential utility of MCIE toward building new sensing materials is demonstrated by tuning the fluorescence response of the porous MOFs as a function of adsorbed small analytes. |
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Photo: Dominick Reuter
Nocera Lab: The 'artificial leaf,' a device that can harness sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen without needing any external connections, is seen with some real leaves, which also convert the energy of sunlight directly into storable chemical form.
Go to MIT News Office>>
The Artificial Leaf has been listed as one of the top innovations in
the world by TIME Magazine. |
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H. Gobind Khorana, MIT’s Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Biology and Chemistry emeritus, died of natural causes in Concord, Mass., Wednesday morning. He was 89.
A winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, Khorana devoted much of his scientific career to unraveling the genetic code and the mechanisms by which nucleic acids give rise to proteins. >> |
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Graphic: Christine Daniloff |
Making a Nobel-winning chemistry reaction
even better
Schrock Group: New catalyst offers greater control over the synthesis of organic cyclic compounds, including potential cancer drugs.>> |
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The McNamara group from Duke University and the Lippard group have reported a rapid extracellular chelator for mobile zinc, named ZX1. Its fast zinc-binding kinetics helped researchers to define mobile zinc's role in both presynaptic and postsynaptic mossy fiber long-term potentiation in the brain. Their studies were published in the September 22 issue of Neuron.
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Robert Silbey, Class of 1942 Professor of Chemistry and former MIT dean of science, dies at 71. Silbey was known for his leadership and political acumen as dean, his commitment to enhancing MIT’s education and research, and his work in condensed phase theory and quantum biology, fields that he helped to pioneer. >> |
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Earle K. Plyler Prize for Molecular Spectroscopy
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| The Field group recently observed a new cis-bent isomer of the first singlet electronically excited state of acetylene, reported in Merer et al., J. Chem. Phys. 134 (24), 244310 (2011). This work represents the first high resolution spectroscopic study of cis-trans isomerization in an electronically excited state. Analysis of the unusual spectra was aided by theoretical calculations in Baraban et al., J. Chem. Phys. 134 (24), 244311 (2011). |
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