Rhodes College has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant in the amount of $180,000 for research conducted by Dr. Larryn Peterson, professor of chemistry and chemistry department chair. The award for the project, titled “RUI: Interrogating Catalytic Efficiency Through Kinetic, Structural and Small-Molecule Guided Investigation of L-DOPA 2,3 Dioxygenases,” will be distributed over three years.
Peterson will work in collaboration with Dr. Keri Colabroy of Muhlenberg College and Dr. Katherine Hicks of the State University of New York at Cortland to investigate how a specific family of enzymes rearranging catecholic carbon found in plants could lead to the production of natural products that have therapeutic properties, including antibacterial and antitumor activities.
Under the direction of Peterson, Colabroy, and Hicks, undergraduate research students will systematically change the size and electronic properties of the plant-based carbon sources, mutate the enzymes’ structures, and study the effect of these changes on the effectiveness of the molecular conversion. The students will have the opportunity to participate in each of the faculty mentor’s laboratories. In addition, parts of the project will be integrated into coursework at each of the home institutions to broaden the reach of original research and help develop the skills that undergraduate students need to succeed in graduate training and science careers.
Peterson joined the Rhodes faculty in 2011, and her research lab utilizes tools from synthetic organic chemistry, chemical biology, biochemistry, and molecular biology to understand important biological processes. Students whom Peterson has mentored have presented their work at conferences, published in scientific journals, and won major awards.
Recently, Peterson published a paper with authors from Muhlenberg College and Rhodes titled “Probing the Mechanism of l-DOPA 2,3-Dioxygenase Using Synthetic Derivatives of 3,4-Dihydroxyhydrocinnamic Acid” in a special issue of the American Chemical Society. The Rhodes authors include Emma Gruss ’24, Jennifer Bui ’26, Jessica Steiner ’22, Gisela Xhafkollari ’23, Ryan Marasco ’21, and Mark Betonio ’20.