Organic Chemistry Seminar

     Although highly successful in Nature, the DNA bases are – in chemical terms – quite limited in their properties.  The tools of synthesis and physical analysis allow us to design a wide variety of DNA base replacements, conferring properties in nucleic acids that can lead to surprising and useful outcomes.  For example, we have designed dozens of novel fluorescent DNA bases, and are incorporating them into short oligomers of thousands of distinct sequences.  From these we are developing agents for imaging specific proteins and enzyme activities in living cells and organisms.  We have also developed broad classes of these DNA-like molecules as chemosensors that can detect many different molecules and ions in air and water, with applications ranging from biomedicine to environmental remediation.