Congratulations to Irazema, Dillan, Cesar, Bennett, and George for a great new paper out on supramolecular mechanochemistry. Our results show that the guest molecules in molecular capsules assembled in the solid state tumble in a liquid-like fashion within the confines of molecular encapsulation. Check it out here!
October 18, 2018
Two papers from the Purse Lab appeared online on this day. It’s the first time in the history of our lab that we have had two papers published on the same day. They’re publications number 26 and 27 on our list. Check them out at <doi:10.1002/chem.201803653> and <doi:10.1002/cpnc.59>! Congrats to all the authors, but especially Ben Turner and Dillon Burns for being authors of both! It’s a great day for the whole team.
The Purse Lab has a new paper out in Chemistry—A European Journal. Lead authors Kristine Teppang, Ray Lee, and Dillon Burns, along with Ben Turner, Melissa Lokensgard, and collaborator Andy Cooksy have studied how base pair and stacking changes the fluorescence of a series of nucleoside analogues. Their findings include striking correlations between the electronic nature of the analogues and their neighboring bases in duplex DNA. We expect that this work, plus further studies by us and others, will eventually lead to the ability to predict fluorescent properties of such molecular probes before synthesizing and testing them. Read the details here.
Purse Lab PhD student Michael Coste is working with our collaborators in the Sohl Lab (SDSU) and Siqueira-Neto Lab (UCSD) to develop new inhibitors of Zika virus replication. Our first publication on this project is now available online at Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. The article is titled “Development and validation of a phenotypic high-content imaging assay for assessing the antiviral activity of small-molecule inhibitors targeting the Zika virus“. Read it here!
Byron Purse gave a talk titled “Rational Design of Brighter, More Responsive Fluorescent Nucleosides” at the Fluorescent Biomolecules and their Building Blocks (FB3) conference at the University of Glasgow, 6/30–7/3, 2018.
We’re thrilled to share the news that the Purse Lab has just been awarded another NSF grant! Our new award, titled “Next-Generation Fluorescent Nucleosides and Structure-Photophysics Relationships“, supports a research program from 2018–21 focused on creating and studying fluorescent modifications of DNA/RNA that we expect to be widely useful in biophysics. Purse Lab students Ben Turner, Dillon Burns, Katrina Ngo, and Susan Andersen deserve special recognition for contributing vital preliminary results that helped hugely in obtaining this funding. We can’t wait to share the results of our research with the broader community.
Read more about this NSF award here.
Congratulations to Purse Lab undergraduates Sara Journey, Kristine Teppang, Cesar Garcia, and Shaylyn Brim for leading a study on mechanically induced molecular capsule assembly, showing that their solid state synthesis methods enable the entrapment of guest molecules that cannot be encapsulated using traditional solvent-mediated methods.The authors’ discoveries show that there are new opportunities to create organized molecular assemblies entirely in the solid state. Potential applications include drug formulation and materials science. Read the details here, in Chemical Science.
This fall semester, the Purse Lab is thrilled to welcome Ani Shalamberidze and Misho Dgebuadze from SDSU’s Georgia campus. Ani and Misho are spending this semester in the group, performing research on a new design of fluorescent nucleoside analogues. It’s awesome to have them on the team.
The Purse Lab has been awarded National Science Foundation funding for our project on fluorescent nucleoside analogues! Our award number CHE-1709796 supports a project titled, “Bright and responsive fluorescent nucleosides from structure-photophysics relationships.” We’re thrilled to have NSF support for our work on developing the next generation of fluorescent nucleosides, which we expect to be used widely in biophysics. Keep your eye open for upcoming Purse Lab publications as we share the outcomes with the community. Read more here about our NSF support.
Kristine Teppang has been an undergraduate researcher in the Purse Lab since 2014 and just graduated with her B.S. degree from SDSU. Her outstanding work has resulted in one published paper, one newly submitted manuscript, and the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry award recognizing the most outstanding graduating organic chemistry student of her year at SDSU. Congratulations, Kristine! She will be joining the UCSD Ph.D. program in Chemistry in the Fall of 2017.