Development of novel tryptophan analogues to study and expand protein function

Development of UAAs to incorporate into azurin model protein
Proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) drives many chemical reactions necessary for bioenergetics and human health including cellular respiration and photosynthesis. Understanding these mechanisms will help guide development of new catalysts and novel therapeutics to combat human diseases. These PCET processes are often facilitated by amino acids such as tryptophan and are highly regulated by conformational changes. To study these processes, unnatural amino acids (UAAs) with altered reactivity or function have previously been used. However, there is a need for unnatural tryptophan in such studies. I have been working with commercially available unnatural indoles, a functional sidechain of tryptophan, and have demonstrated that I can incorporate these into a protein, azurin, using biosynthetic approaches developed in the Offenbacher lab, as a proof-of-principle.

Scholars @ ECU