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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Engineering An Alkane-Hydroxylating Bacterial Monooxygenase: A Tale Of Two Chemistries, Arjun Nanda
Engineering An Alkane-Hydroxylating Bacterial Monooxygenase: A Tale Of Two Chemistries, Arjun Nanda
Pomona Senior Theses
Toluene / o-xylene monooxyenase (ToMO) from Pseudomonas sp. OX1 is a multimeric metalloenzyme enzyme that efficiently catalyzes the hydroxylation of aromatic hydrocarbons with high specificity. Though included in a larger group of conserved bacterial multicomponent monooxygenases (BMMs) studied as potential biocatalysts for industrial hydrocarbon chemistry, the substrate specificity and oxygenated intermediates of ToMO differ greatly from its well-characterized, alkane-hydroxylating analog sMMO. Despite a shared global topology and near identical active sites, sMMO can cleave inert C-H bonds in alkanes while ToMO cannot - two seemingly similar structures give rise to vastly different chemistries. This work seeks to determine a structural …
Molecular Modeling Of Novel Tryptamine Analogs With Antibiotic Potential Through Their Inhibition Of Tryptophan Synthase, Jared Schattenkerk
Molecular Modeling Of Novel Tryptamine Analogs With Antibiotic Potential Through Their Inhibition Of Tryptophan Synthase, Jared Schattenkerk
CMC Senior Theses
The growing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a global health crisis that threatens the effectiveness of antibiotics in medical treatment. Increases in the number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and a drop in the pharmaceutical development of novel antibiotics have combined to form a situation that is rapidly increasing the likelihood of a post-antibiotic era. The development of antibiotics with novel enzymatic targets is critical to stall this growing crisis. In silico methods of molecular modeling and drug design were utilized in the development of novel tryptamine analogs as potential antibiotics through their inhibition of the bacterial enzyme tryptophan synthase. Following the …
Phage Display To Identify Functional Resistance Mutations To Rigosertib, Nedim Filipovic
Phage Display To Identify Functional Resistance Mutations To Rigosertib, Nedim Filipovic
CMC Senior Theses
In vitro protein selection has had major impacts in the field of protein engineering. Traditional screens assay individual proteins for specific function. Selection, however, analyzes a pool of mutants and yields the best variants. Phage display, a successful selection technique, also provides a reliable link between variant phenotype and genotype. It can also be coupled with high throughput sequencing to map protein mutations; potentially highlighting vital mutations in variants. We propose to apply this technique to cancer therapy. RAF, a serine/threonine kinase, is critical for cell regulation in mammals. RAF can be activated by oncogenic RAS, found in over 30% …
Manipulating Lipid Spreading Domain Formation With Compositional Gradients And Plasmonic Nanoparticles, Chen-Min Hung
Manipulating Lipid Spreading Domain Formation With Compositional Gradients And Plasmonic Nanoparticles, Chen-Min Hung
CMC Senior Theses
After colliding two solid-supported spreading bilayers of different compositions, we produce a dynamic gradient as the newly-healed bilayer equilibrates. We apply this approach to study the formation of galactosyl ceramide (GalCer) domains. With a single experiment, we are able to explore the effects of varying cholesterol concentration on GalCer domains. To further control domain formation, we aimed to locally heat membranes with embedded plasmonic nanoparticles. However, we discovered a percolation threshold of spreading lipids over the array of nanoparticles. We found that surfaces with gold nanoparticles deposited at an average inter-particle distance of 40 nm inhibited lipid bilayer spreading, but …