ChemistryViews, the online magazine of Chemistry Europe, has just published a highlight of Ben Turner’s new research article describing the use of fluorescent nucleotide substrate analogues for retroviral reverse transcriptases!
Check out their coverage of Ben’s research! <http://www.chemistryviews.org/details/ezine/11242991/Reverse_Transcription_Used_to_Generate_Fluorescent_DNA.html>
Dana Rosansky is joining the Purse Lab, fresh after finishing her B.A. in Biochemistry from the University of San Diego. Dana worked with Prof. Tammy Dwyer at USD on NMR studies on the structure of chemically modified DNA. Now she’s shifting her focus to design and create these DNA modifications herself! Dana’s research will focus on fluorescent modifications of DNA and RNA that will shed light (literally!) on the regulatory mechanisms that control the expression of the genetic code. Welcome, Dana!
Congratulations to Ben Turner on his new paper that’s just out in ChemPlusChem! Ben’s results show that fluorescent tricyclic cytidine analogues tC and DEAtC are substrates for retroviral reverse transcriptases. They can be used by these enzymes to synthesize fluorescently labeled double-stranded DNA from an RNA template. Further development of Ben’s methods may lead to ways to monitor the replication of retroviruses such as HIV in cell or tissue culture. Read Ben’s article here!
Congratulations to George Samaan for his 1st first-author paper, just published in Bioorg. Med. Chem. Lett.! Our new study shows that structure-guided inhibitor design can be used to prepare new 8-oxo-G analogues as GTP cyclohydrolase inhibitors with the potential to constitute a new class of antibiotics. We have some even newer designs coming. 😉
Read all about it here!
Today we published a new paper on our efforts to combat the Zika virus. Lead authors Jean Bernatchez of UCSD and Michael Coste (from the Purse Lab at SDSU) have shown that the activity of Zika inhibitors synthesized by Michael depends on the type of cell infected by the virus. Our work shows that researchers working on potential Zika cures need the pay special attention to use disease-relevant cell types when studying the potency of potential drug leads in cell-based assays.
This project is a collaboration between the Purse Lab (SDSU), the Siqueira-Neto Lab (UCSD), the Sohl Lab (SDSU), The Hecht Group (Southwestern College), and the Zhu Lab (UCSD / The Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine).
Read more here!
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.