QB3-UCSC Graduate Fellowship for Innovators
I’m utilizing methods in synthetic chemistry and marine algal enzymology to make new chemical tools to study glutamate receptors within the mammalian brain. The specific family of neuronal receptors I’m targeting are implicated in a wide range of biomedical phenomena from addiction, pain, and neurodegeneration to learning, memory, and synaptic plasticity. However, neuroscientists have very few efficacious tools to interrogate the properties and functions of these receptors. Through the use of biosynthetic enzymes from marine algae I’ve established access to the kainoid class of natural products which are potent neurotoxins as agonists of these glutamate receptors. Additionally I’ve been able to use this framework to create novel kainoids with new functionalities that expand the utility of these neurotoxins to be better tools for neuroscientists studying ionotropic glutamate receptors.