Chemistry Colloquium

The guest speaker for the April 15th Chemistry & Biochemistry Colloquium will be Prof. Dennis Wright: Targeting two-ion-dependent enzymes for antimicrobial drug discovery. Dr. Wright is a Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy, University of Connecticut.

Abstract:

Several enzymes utilize two closely bound divalent magnesium ions in the active site to correctly position substrates and trigger catalysis. Small molecule inhibitors of these types of enzymes often rely on planar arrays of three or more heteroatoms to for adjacent chelates to these metal ions to prevent binding of the natural substrate. We have been interested in several of these enzymes that play crucial roles in the replication of important human pathogens. The first portion of the talk will focus on natural product inhibitors of the enzyme enolase, a key glycolytic enzyme, as potential antibacterials agents against Gram-negative pathogens. These compounds are built on a peptidic framework and embedded with strong metal-coordinating functionality. In the second portion of the talk, the extension of this strategy of the DNA exonuclease enzyme UL12 found in human herpes viruses will be discussed. UL12 is part of a two-component recombinase that has been shown to be extension for replication of the HSV genome,