Bioconjugate Chemistry

Catalog description

Interdisciplinary research and technology are increasingly reprogramming biomolecules to do our bidding. This reprogramming entails understanding in 3D space the implications of proteins and nucleic acid structure on their non-canonical activities in chemical biology. These biomolecules are also chemically linked to a host of other inorganic and organic molecules, which requires knowledge about the chemistries available and feasible for a particular application. In this course, undergraduate and graduate students will first learn the structure of biomolecules in 3D space using mixed reality platform developed by the instructor -- called HoloOrigami. They will then venture into a semester-long project-based learning on chemical reactions and functional linkers available to conjugate different molecular species -- tune their spatial orientation and relative distance using linkers. They will also learn the new alphabet of non canonical nucleic acids and amino acids that have been synthesized such as peptide nucleic acid (PNA), locked nucleic acid (LNA), etc. in the end, they will present a talk and report on a conjugation chemistry approach to link to molecules of their choosing for a particular application. By the end of the course, students -- from chemistry, biology, biophysics, bioengineering, and biochemistry -- would have a multidisciplinary perspective on complex functional molecular systems including their structure, synthesis, and function. Offered as CHEM 330 and CHEM 430 .