Seminar:

Biocompatible reactions and activatable probes for in vivo imaging of activity of enzymes

March 11, 2016

Jianghong Rao

Biocompatible chemical reactions have found wide applications in biology from bimolecular modification to in vivo imaging. This talk will introduce the condensation reaction between 2- cyanobenzothiazole (CBT) and D-cysteine, which is the last step of the synthesis of D-luciferin, a substrate for firefly luciferase. A unique feature of this reaction is that their reactivity may be put under the control of the activity of an enzyme. In this seminar I will highlight our recent efforts in exploring this reaction to design and build activatable molecular probes for imaging enzyme activity in living cells and living animals.