Seminar:

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.