Inorganic Chemistry Seminar: Dr. Alexandra Brown, Princeton University
Photo Credit: Sophie G. Bender
About the Seminar
"Understanding and Harnessing Enzymatic Control Over Reactive Intermediates"
Metalloenzymes catalyze a vast range of kinetically and thermodynamically challenging reactions that are essential to both primary and secondary metabolism; their unique reactivity is enabled by a combination of metal-dependent coordination chemistry and the spatial control over reactive intermediates afforded by a protein scaffold. This talk will bridge the transition metal chemistry of isolated metal complexes with the development of enzymes suited for selective biocatalytic transformations. I will first describe the synthesis of iron-sulfur cluster complexes and the insight these systems provide into how organometallic chemistry influences reaction outcomes in radical S-adenosylmethionine enzymes. Later, I will discuss how the protein scaffold can be perturbed to tune selectivity of radical reactions via the directed evolution of flavin-containing photoenzymes for stereoselective hydroamination reactions.
About the Speaker
Alexandra is an Arnold O. Beckman postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Todd Hyster's lab at Princeton University, where she is developing engineered flavin-containing enzymes for selective photobiocatalysis. Alexandra carried out her PhD research with Prof. Dan Suess at MIT studying synthetic iron sulfur clusters to understand the unique structural and electronic features that enable these cofactors to perform challenging redox chemistry. Her PhD research was supported by the NSF GRFP and a Fannie and John Hertz foundation fellowship. Alexandra received her Bachelor's degree in chemistry from UC Berkeley where she conducted research on synthetic inorganic chemistry in Prof. John Arnold's lab.