Nicola L. Pohl
Bioanalytical, Bioorganic, and Synthetic Organic Chemistry
Home | Research Interests | Group Page | Selected Publications
Research Interests
Bioanalytical /Bioorganic/Synthetic Organic Chemistry of Natural Products
Our understanding of proteins and nucleic acids such as DNA and RNA has expanded enormously in the past few decades, whereas our knowledge of carbohydrates is still in its infancy. Carbohydrates display enormous functional and structural diversity; sugars are found in antitumor and antibiotic compounds, serve as a kind of recognition element or "glue" between cells and proteins, and regulate a range of biological functions in processes from diabetes to cancer to antibiotic resistance. In addition, sugars serve as the basic renewable building block in engineering bio-based products. The comparative dearth of detailed information about carbohydrates derives in part from the lack of powerful tools to study this class of molecules-sequence analysis protocols, sensitive direct assays, and simple synthetic or biosynthetic access to a range of oligo- and polysaccharides.
Our laboratory is developing new assays and synthetic methods to address these major hurdles in exploring glycobiology. We are probing the fundamental question of how fidelity is maintained in carbohydrate biosynthetic processes and how substrate binding relates to catalysis across the three major branches of life. This basic information is illuminating ways nature solved the difficult molecular recognition problem of binding sugars in water and providing clues to engineer or use these proteins to make new glycosylated structures. The research group is also evaluating these biosynthetic pathways for their disease diagnostic value and their potential as targets for therapeutic intervention as well as designing chemically and metabolically stable variants of carbohydrate structures as structural mimics and possible inhibitors or biological tools.
