Jan 26
Chemistry Department Seminar: Matt Francis, UC Berkeley
Mon, January 26, 2026
• 3:30pm
- 4:30pm (1h) • Olin 149
Aldo DeBenedictis Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, UC Berkeley
"Building New Fusion Proteins with Enzymatic Oxidative Coupling Reactions"
The uniquely diverse structures and functions of biomolecules offer many exciting opportunities for creating new materials with advanced properties. Using only a limited set of side chains and auxiliary groups, they have evolved unparalleled abilities to accelerate chemical transformations, facilitate the delivery of genetic cargo to targeted cells, bind specific analytes in complex mixtures, transduce energy, and generate elaborate three-dimensional structures through self-assembly. Over the years, our lab has sought to incorporate these capabilities into new materials for use in drug delivery, diagnostic imaging, solar energy collection, and water purification. To do this, however, we also needed to develop chemical strategies that can functionalize biomolecules with a wide range of synthetic functionalities. This presentation will focus on a powerful set of enzymatic oxidative coupling reactions catalyzed by tyrosinase, which generates o-quinones from simple phenols and tyrosine residues using molecular oxygen as the stoichiometric oxidant. These reactive intermediates undergo rapid coupling reactions with select nucleophiles, including anilines, N-terminal proline residues, and cysteine thiolates. The mild conditions, high yields, and high chemoselectivity of this strategy have proven extraordinarily successful for the coupling of full-size protein domains, allowing facile access to bispecific cell engagers and other protein therapeutics with interdomain geometries that were previously inaccessible. They have also been used to attach proteins to a diverse set of material components through well-defined linkages. The chemical development of these reactions will be presented, along with several examples of new protein bioconjugates that have been prepared through their use.
**This seminar counts towards the chemistry major seminar attendance requirement
**Sponsored by the Jerry & Jean Mohrig Lectureship
from Chemistry