Events in organic chemistry.

Defining and harnessing STING activation and inhibition mechanisms

Abstract: The STING pathway is an essential innate immune pathway that is activated when double stranded DNA is detected in the cytosol. This occurs during viral infection and tumorigenesis and activation of the pathway elicits strong anti-viral and anti-cancer immunity. However, double stranded DNA is also misplaced in the cytosol during trauma, radiation, autoimmune syndromes, and aging. In these cases, STING activation exacerbates the unwanted immunity against healthy tissues.

Masquerading Soft Materials: Anomalous Behavior in Macromolecular Design

Abstract: The Golder Research Team utilizes fundamental principles of molecular structure to control synthetic polymer function. Many of society’s greatest advancements spanning health, sanitation, construction, electronics, and transportation have been enabled by the invention and application of plastics. Simultaneously, these materials have created significant concerns about global sustainability, climate impact, and environmental pollution.

Dearomative Alkaloid Synthesis

Abstract: Biologically active alkaloids continue to serve as a means of biomedical discovery in addition to serving as forcing functions for the invention of new chemical transformations. Structurally, many of these natural products and rationally designed drugs also contain one or more piperidine rings, making it the most common nitrogenous heterocycle amongst approved therapeutics. Thus, the concise redox-economic construction of these heterocycles in the context of target-oriented synthesis has become a recent research focus in our lab.

Enzyme Discovery & Engineering to Create Biocatalysts Suitable for Applications in Organic Chemistry

This lecture will cover recent achievements in the discovery, protein engineering and application of enzymes in biocatalysis [1]. For the asymmetric synthesis of chiral amines, we created (S)-selective amine transaminases for the acceptance of bulky ketones [2]. Most recently, we have developed a sophisticated growth selection method and could create highly active and selective enzymes from three classes to make important chiral precursors for pharmaceutical building blocks [3]. We have also explored machine learning to guide enzyme engineering of transaminases [4].

Peptide-Based Catalysis[2.0]

Abstract: Asymmetric catalysis has advanced rapidly as a discipline as a result of powerful modalities.  Transition metal complexes, organocatalysts and enzymes have all played critical roles.  Probably critical from the start, and in all three of these approaches to the field, noncovalent interactions are now appreciated to play a decisive role as determinants of selectivity.  Peptide-based catalysts have proven to be a central platform for the systematic study of noncovalent interactions as determinants of selectivity in a wide variety of reactions.  Design of new catalyt

Development of half-reactions for organic chemistry

Abstract: This lecture will describe the idea of synthetic half-reactions and its applications towards understanding the interplay of chemical reactivity and conformational interconversions. Apart from electrochemistry, which offers half-reaction formalism to predict reactivity, there is no system that dissects chemical transformations into simple energetic components with the goal of matching uphill steps with cognate downhill processes.

Radical-Based Approach for Synthesis of Complex Natural Products

Abstract: Natural products with a high ratio of sp3-hybridized atoms and oxygen-substituted stereogenic centers represent privileged structures for the development of pharmaceuticals and chemical probes.  The multiple oxygen functionalities of these natural products endow their potent and selective biological activities, although they significantly heighten the challenge of their chemical assemblies.1  We focused on developing efficient strategies for the total syntheses of this biologically and chemically important class of molecules.  Specifically, we have designed and de

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