Our Faculty and Staff

My lab studies the formation of DNA adducts arising from the metabolism of arylhydrazines and the conformation and biological consequences of adduct formation, work we have been engaged in for approximately 25 years. We also study P450-mediated metabolism by CYP2C9. In particular, we study the mechanism of atypical kinetics using both experimental and computational approaches with respect to SAR, electron transfer and protein-protein interactions. Our approach combines both traditional and nanotechnology based methods. Both of these project require synthetic expertise and we have made a variety of compounds to support both projects and have sufficient expertise to conduct the synthetic aspects of the proposed research. In addition, in both of my research areas we apply a variety of molecular modeling techniques to model SAR and to render predictions. In addition, one of my roles is as the director of the structural and computational biology core facility. This facility houses computational facilities that are used for molecular modeling of small and large, biological molecules, typically DNA, proteins, and mutants as well as instrumentation need to obtain experimental data needed for structural characterization and data that complements the computational results. This includes mass spectrometers, 300 and 600 MHz NMR spectrometers, circular dichroism spectrophotometer, a Biacor SPR, and smaller equipment including UV-Vis and fluorometers. The proposed research is aligned with both our synthetic expertise of making small molecules for a range of purposes and the development of SAR models.