Prof. Wagner is a Visiting Assistant Professor teaching General Chemistry I lectures and labs, Biochemistry I lab, and Biochemistry II lectures and labs. Prof. Wagner earned her PhD at the University of Pittsburgh in August 2022 by defending her thesis regarding chemical tools to discover epigenetic roles of lysine-mediated protein-protein interactions. She is most interested in researching novel interactions between histone-binding proteins with non-histones. Previously discovered interactions in this field are known to be present in cancerous and diseased cells. Others have proven to be essential for normal cellular processes.
Based on research conducted at the University of Pittsburgh, Prof. Wagner has published four papers. One paper focused on photoactivated bromodomains and their usefulness in identifying novel binding partners via crosslinking and proteomics. A second paper addresses other aspects of the same research. Another paper focused on member-specific inhibition of lysine demethylation to differentiate between roles of enzymes with largely conserved active sites. The fourth paper, published September 13, 2023 focuses crosslinking-assisted substrate identification (CASI) of lysine demethylases in the KDM4 family. Prof. Wagner was involved in peptide synthesis, demethylase activity screening, and methyltransferase expression and activity screening.
One additional manuscript awaiting publication featured Prof. Wagner’s crosslinking, ITC, qRTPCR, and ChIP qCPR all combined to assess the role of the interaction of a bromodomain with an immune-related interacting partner. This manuscript is currently awaiting further testing to further characterize this novel binding mechanism, but what has been found thus far is on bioRxiv.
