Organic Chemistry Seminar: Professor Jason Sello, Brown University

Organic Chemistry Seminar: Professor Jason Sello, Brown University
Date
Tue June 6th 2017, 4:30 - 5:30pm
Event Sponsor
Chemistry Department
Location
Sapp Center Lecture Hall

Organic Chemistry Seminar: Professor Jason Sello, Brown University, Sapp Center Lecture Hall, 4:30pm (Host: Justin Du Bois)

"Anomalous Small Molecules in Chemistry, Biology and Medicine"

About the Seminar:

Much high-impact research in the chemical and biological sciences, particularly that which underlies innovations in medicine, began with curiosity about the structures and mechanisms of bioactive small molecules. In search of potentially transformative discoveries, my research group is focused on molecules that are anomalous by virtue of their structures and the mechanisms by which they perturb biological systems. The seminar will describe how our recent studies of such molecules have stimulated the development of novel methods for chemical synthesis, revealed fresh insights into cellular processes like protein homoeostasis and macromolecular trafficking, and inspired unconventional strategies for treating infectious diseases and other maladies.       

 

About the Speaker:

Jason K. Sello is an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry at Brown University. Prior to his appointment at Brown in 2006, Prof. Sello investigated RNA processing in Streptomyces bacteria using genetics as a visiting scientist at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, England and studied enzymes catalyzing antibiotic biosynthesis as a post-doctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School in the laboratories of Prof. Christopher T. Walsh. He earned a Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard University in 2002 for work in diversity-oriented chemical synthesis under the supervision of Prof. Stuart L. Schreiber and a B.S. in biology, magna cum laude, from Morehouse College in 1997. In his independent career, Prof. Sello has been synergistically using experimental methods from chemistry, biophysics, biochemistry, and genetics to study biological phenomena and to develop new therapeutics and microbial platforms for the conversion of plant biomass into commodity chemicals. He has been the recipient of several awards, including career awards from the Burroughs Welcome Fund and the National Science Foundation. In 2013, he was recognized with a yearlong appointment at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Professor of Biology.