Organic Chemistry Seminar: Professor Alison Ondrus, University of Illinois Chicago

About the Seminar

Function at the metabolite-protein interface

Chemical structures encode biological information.  In addition to providing building blocks and energy, metabolites interact with a spectrum of other biomolecules to profoundly influence the landscape of a cell.  In this talk, I’ll discuss my lab's work to decode the non-metabolic roles of metabolites in the cellular environment.  I'll focus on a particular class of molecules known as oxysterols– nonenergetic cholesterol metabolites that function as central regulators of innate immune response, neurotransmission, and growth, and as instrumental players in autoimmune disease, neurodegeneration, and metastasis. I'll describe our design and synthesis of chemoproteomics tools that enable us to map the proteome-wide interactions of these molecules in cells, and illustrate emergent connections between their molecular targets and specific disease states.  In particular, I'll focus on our recent studies to elucidate the functional consequences of cholesterol metabolite binding to the elusive sigma-2 receptor (aka TMEM97). Together, I aim to illustrate how our lab uses chemistry to map small molecules in human health and to expand their potential in therapy.

About the Speaker 

Click HERE for CV

Host: James Chen