Principal Investigator Barbara Imperiali
We are inspired by potent natural product inhibitors of glycoconjugate biosynthesis such as mureidomycin and tunicamycin. These compounds share a common uridine scaffold and metal-ion coordinating or displacing groups that interfere with target enzymes. We develop nucleoside-based libraries for targeting glycan biosynthesis and to overcome bottlenecks in traditional synthesis, we develop solid-phase approaches to rapidly access diversity of structures with tunable functions. We then use a newly-established nucleotide-detection assay for high-throughput inhibition studies