News & Events

When

Date - February 1, 2019
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm

What

Assistant Professor
Department of Chemistry
High Point University
Talk Title: Development of a Photoinduced Thiol-Ene Click Reaction to Interrogate Native Disulfide Bond Structure and Function

Abstract:

To study the oxidized, disulfide state of peptides and small proteins, our approach relies on the synthetic installation of a thioether bridge, in place of the native disulfide, to serve as a non-reducible staple while minimally altering polarity and electronic character.  Using flow chemistry techniques for rapid peptide synthesis, the synthetically accessible amino acid (S)-vinylglycine replaces a cysteine in the protein sequence.  Using a photoredox-catalyzed thiol-ene reaction (TEC), the resulting thioether delivers a redox-inert disulfide surrogate to examine changes in biomolecule stability and efficacy.