The Buettner lab continued their work on developing de novo proteins to function as hydrolases, and expanded to also work on developing mimics of natural haloperoxidase enzymes. Brittany Loh (’22 Chem) and Micaylah Bowers (’23 BMB) continued in the lab, as well as Carolina Fernandes (’22 Chem). In Spring 2021 Oliver Pickering (’22 BMB) and Mark Seibert (’23 Chem) joined the lab. Brittany and Micaylah spent the summer of 2021 in the lab working to characterize the metal binding and reactivity of our hydrolase mimics, while Oliver used their summer 2020 findings to develop a new series of de novo proteins to function as vanadium haloperoxidase mimics, all supported by X-SIG. Carolina and Mark did REUs at Southern Illinois and Duquesne University, respectively.
In the Fall of 2021, everyone marched forward in their projects, and Ethan Clare (’25 Chem) and Cristin McIntosh (’24 BMB) joined the lab, Ethan to start to learn Brittany’s metal binding characterization work, and Cristin to learn Oliver’s protein production and characterization work. Brittany, Oliver, and Micaylah all presented their work at the Spring National ACS meeting in San Diego. Late in the semester, Audrey Moroz (’25 Chem) joined the lab to take on the reactivity portion of Oliver’s work, in preparation for Carolina, Oliver, and Brittany to graduate. We are certainly missing all of them as we continue to build on all their hard work in the lab.
Micaylah Bowers presented a poster titled “Hydrolytic reactivity of de novo designed mini-metalloenzymes” with Alexander Paredes (’20 BMB) and Prof. Buettner as co-authors at the American Chemical Society meeting (March 2022).
Brittany Loh presented a poster titled “Biophysical characterization of de novo mini-metalloenzymes” with Olivia Peduzzi (‘20 BMB), Mark Seibert (’23 Chem), Alexander Paredes, Carolina Fernandes, Oliver Pickering, and Micaylah Bowers and Prof. Buettner as co-authors at the American Chemical Society meeting (March 2022).
Oliver Pickering presented a poster titled “Hydrolytic reactivity of de novo designed mini-metalloenzymes” with Brittany Loh and Prof. Buettner as co-authors at the American Chemical Society meeting (March 2022).
Prof. Buettner gave talks at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting of the ACS (May 2021), the University of Maryland Baltimore County (September 2021), and the American Chemical Society meeting (March 2022) all titled “Towards new titanium and vanadium enzymes.”
Alexander Paredes, Olivia Peduzzi and Prof. Buettner had a paper published in The Journal of Biological Inorganic chemistry titled: Binuclear zinc hydrolase mimics for DNA cleavage.
