Honours Projects

1.    Improving Supercapacitor performance through:

a. Indentifying chemical reactions that cause the loss of stored charge.
b. Improving the surface chemistry of Supercapacitor electrodes.

Andreas, Lussier and Oickle, J. Power Sources 187 (2009) 275–283; Black and Andreas, J. Phys. Chem. C 2010, 114, 12030–12038.

2.    Using Bovine Serum Albumin as a blocking protein in biosensors.

Yang, Huang, Meng, Shen and  Jiao , Analytica Chimica Acta 647 (2009) 159–166.

1.   Strategies of enzyme inhibitor/drug design:  synthesis and evaluation of enzyme inhibitors

2.   Enzyme catalysis:  Site-directed mutagenesis, covalent modification, and spectroscopic studies to analyze the role of enzyme active site architecture in catalysis

3.  Chemical biology: design, synthesis, and evaluation of reagents for enzyme activity profiling of proteomes

Lietzan, Nagaar, Pellmann, Bourque, Bearne, & St. Maurice (2012) Biochemistry 51, 1160.

Nagar, Narmandakh, Khalak, & Bearne (2012) Biochemistry 50, 8846. Steeves & Bearne (2011) Bioorg. Med. Chem. Lett. 21, 5188.

Garsuch A, d'Eon R, Dahn T, et al., Journal of the Electrochemical Society, 155, B236-B243 (2008)

Tran, J; Doucette, A.,  Anal. Chem, 80, 1568-
1573 (2008).

1. Chemical biology: discovery of new natural products with cytotoxic activity.

Eight-membered ring-containing jadomycins: implications for non-enzymatic natural products biosynthesis. Robertson, A.W.; Martinez-Farina, C.F.; Smithen, D.A.; Yin, H.; Monro, S.; Thompson, A.; McFarland, S.A.; Syvitski, R.T.; Jakeman, D.L., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2015, 137, 3271–3275. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja5114672

2. Chemical biology: synthesis and evaluation of enzyme inhibitors as potential antibacterials.

α-Fluorophosphonates reveal how a phosphomutase conserves the protein transition state over hexose recognition in its two-step reaction Jin, Y.; Bhattasali, D.; Pellegrini, E.; Forget, S.M.; Baxter, N.J.; Cliff, M.J.; Bowler, M.W.; Jakeman, D.L.; Blackburn, G.M.; Waltho, J.P. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci USA. 2014, 111, 12384-12389. http://www.pnas.org/content/111/34/12384.long

Theoretical chemistry, Computational chemistry, Quantum chemistry, Density functional theory, Molecular interactions, Physical chemistry, Materials

A. Otero de la Roza, B. Huynh Cao, I. K. Price, J. E. Hein, and E. R. Johnson. Predicting the Relative Solubilities of Racemic and Enantiopure Crystals by Density-Functional Theory. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 53, 7879-7882 (2014).

 Z. Ye, A. Otero de la Roza, E. R. Johnson, and A. Martini. Oscillatory Motion of Bilayer Graphene. Nanotech. 25, 425703 (2014).

A. Otero de la Roza, J. D. Mallory, and E. R. Johnson. MetallophilicInteractions from Dispersion-Corrected Density-Functional Theory. J. Chem. Phys. 140, 18A504 (2014).

Spectroscopic characterization, structural biology, simulation and bioinformatic analysis of membrane-spanning and fibrous proteins.

Langelaan, D.N., Reddy, T., Banks, A.W., Dellaire, G., Dupré, D.J. and Rainey, J.K. Biochim Biophys Acta, 1828, 1471-1483 (2013).

Reddy, T. and Rainey, J.K. J Phys Chem B, 116. 8942-8954 (2012).

Xu, L., Rainey, J.K., Meng, Q. and Liu, X-Q. PLOS ONE, 7, e50227 (2012).

1.     Development of catalytic reactions using  low valent phosphorous compounds.

2.     Development of chiral catalysts using combinations of boron and nitrogen.

1)   Chong, C. C.; Kinjo, R. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2015, 54, 12116-12120.
2)   Hounjet, L. J.; Stephan, D. W. Org. Process Res. Dev., 2014, 18, 385- 391.

Design and Application of New Transition Metal
Catalysts for use in Chemical Synthesis

Stradiotto and co-workers: Synlett, 2011, 2443 (Review from past 3 years).

Synthesis of heterocycles and other organic and inorganic frameworks - methodology development, materials with new light absorbing/emitting properties, medicinal chemistry to design compounds with biological activity such as anti-malarial and anti-cancer properties.

Conversion of F-BODIPYs to Cl-BODIPYs: Enhancing the Reactivity of F-BODIPYs. Lundrigan, T.; Thompson, A. J. Org. Chem. 2013, 78, 757-761.

Influence of B-ring modifications on proton affinity, transmembrane anion transport and anti-cancer properties of synthetic prodigiosenes. Marchal, E.; Rastogi, S.; Thompson, A.; Davis, J.T. Org. Biomol. Chem., 2014, 12, 7515-7522 

Activation and Deprotection of F-BODIPYs using Boron Trihalides. Lundrigan, T.; Cameron, T.S.; Thompson, A. Chem. Commun. 2014, 50, 7028-7031 

Transition metal pincer complexes: Synthesis, bond activation chemistry,and catalysis

Morgan, E; MacLean, D. F.; McDonald, R.; Turculet, L. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2009, 132, 14234.

Mitton, S. J.; Turculet, L. Chem. Eur. J., 2012, 18, 15258.

Synthesis of nano-materials for potential biomedical and energy-related applications. 

Impact of Protecting Ligands on Surface Structure and Antibacterial Activity of Silver Nanoparticles,  J. Daniel Padmos, Robert T. M. Boudreau, Donald F. Weaver and Peng Zhang, Langmuir 2015, 31, 3745

Correlating the Atomic Structure of Bimetallic Silver-Gold Nanoparticles to Their Antibacterial and Cytotoxic Activities, J. Daniel Padmos, Maxine Langman, Katelyn MacDonald, Patricia Comeau, Zhan Yang, Mark Filliagi and Peng Zhang, J. Phys. Chem. C 2015, 119, 7472

M. Guignard, L. Albrecht, J. W. Zwanziger, Chemistry of Materials, 19, 286-290 (2007).
M. Guignard, J. W. Zwanziger, J. Non-Cryst. Solids, 354, 79-83 (2008).