Once I had graduated at the Universidade de Vigo in Organic Chemistry I joined Prof. de Lera's group and started an interesting line of investigation aimed to gain deeper understanding into the secrets jealously guarded by rhodopsin, the protein responsible of the vision in mammals. Dynamics of the photoactivation process of rhodopsin is a key into the knowledge of how we see and, probably more important, why sometimes we lack vision and which could be new approaches to heal those diseases.
I synthesized several fluorescent ligands which can be used as molecular probes by biochemists to track the conformational changes ocurring in rhodopsin when a photon excites the photoreceptors in our retine. These changes in the core of the protein affect the spatial orientation of the citoplasmatic helix of rhodopsin, opening or closing the dock position of the G protein. The G protein docking starts a chain of events which will eventually end up with a amplificated electric signal running across the optic nerve towards the brain.
Highly recomended sites:By the time I was defending my essay on fluorescent probes I had already developed a vividly increasing interest on other areas of chemistry such us computational chemistry. Mixing powders and solutions, purifing compounds and using NMR spectometers was kind of fun (honestly, it was) but it did not provide me with some of the answers I had been dying for during my degree. I wanted to know why reactions behave the way they do and how good is human knowledge at the moment to predict such a complex process. The area which met my necesities was computational chemistry.
Nowadays I focus my attention on pericyclic reactions. These reactions were first named no mechanism reactions since chemists were not able to detect any intermediate, they were insensitive to solvation changes and proceed with an astonishingly stereocontrol. Profs. Woodward and Hoffmann provided the first and most important theoretical scheme to explain these reactions.
Pericyclic reactions are both synthetically and theoretically interesting. Organic chemists like the impressive stereocontrol of these reactions. Theoreticians are challenged by pericyclic processes which seem to escape from the rules proposed by Woodward and Hoffmann.
Highly recomended sitesWhen I mannage to convince my advisor at the Universidade de Vigo to let me run away for a (brief) period of time I come to the University of Minnesota to join prof. York's group and enjoy with the superb group of people you can find here.
Here my mind has to change from organic pericyclic processes to the more biological processes involved in the catalysis of RNA. Prof. York's leads an ambitious project wich aims to disclose the way RNA folds, reacts, catalizes and autocatalizes. I am involved in two main areas of these huge project. First, phosphoranes are one of the building blocks of RNA, actually most of the bioprocesses ocurring in RNA target the phosphorane part of the nucleosides. One of the reactions phosphoranes undergo at even the mildest conditions is pseudorotation. Pseudorotation is a special conformational movement ocurring in some pentacoordinated species. This process may change the structure of the phosphorane in such a way that experimental results aimed to discover the mechanism of hydrolisis of RNA can lead to wrong conclusions if based on the stereochemical features of the phosphorane. Second, the group is in the process of constructing an impressive database of high-level DFT structures which will eventually be on-line. This database will help in the construction of new, fast and accurate semiempirical hamiltonians to handle RNA efficiently
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