Philip Dawson, PhD
Professor
Department of Chemistry
Research Focus
We have developed a chemical approach for the production of the large polypeptide chains that comprise protein molecules, enabling us to change the structure of a protein in ways impossible by natural means. We use solid phase peptide synthesis to generate peptides up to ~50 amino acids in length and then assemble them using chemoselective reactions to make proteins up to ~150 amino acids in length. This-chemical ligation-approach greatly facilitates the synthesis of proteins of moderate size and has opened the world of proteins to the synthetic tools of organic chemistry. Chemical ligation can be extended to biologically expressed proteins enabling the semisynthesis of proteins of unlimited size that contain fluorophores or cross-linking agents at defined positions. Our goal is to introduce non-coded amino acids and other chemical groups into proteins to better understand the molecular basis of protein function.
Select Publications
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Otomo, Takanori; Dawson, Philip E.; Otomo, Takanori; Lu, Chenxi; Knouse, Kyle W.; Hintzen, Jordi C.; Hill, David E.; Flood, Dillon T.; Dawson, Philip E.; Cistrone, Philip A.; Chen, Jason S. Selenomethionine as an expressible handle for bioconjugations.. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2021, 118, e2005164118.
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Deechongkit, Songpon; Nguyen, H.; Powers, Evan T.; Dawson, Philip E.; Gruebele, M.; Kelly, Jeffery W. Context-dependent contributions of backbone hydrogen bonding to ß-sheet folding energetics. Nature 2004, 430, 101-105.
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Wolan, Dennis W.; Dawson, Philip E.; Baran, Phil S.; Wolan, Dennis W.; Vantourout, Julien C.; Sturgell, Emily J.; Sanchez, Brittany B.; Knouse, Kyle W.; Kitamura, Seiya; Flood, Dillon T.; Dawson, Philip E.; Chen, Jason S.; Baran, Phil S. Synthetic Elaboration of Native DNA by RASS (SENDR).. ACS central science 2020, 6, 1789-1799.
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Flood, Dillon; Hintzen, J. C.; Bird, Michael J.; Cistrone, Philip A.; Chen, Jason S.; Dawson, Philip E. Leveraging the Knorr pyrazole synthesis for the facile generation of thioester surrogates for use in native chemical ligation. Angewandte Chemie-International Edition 2018, 57, 11634-11639.
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Flood, Dillon; Yan, Nicholas; Dawson, Philip E. Post-translational backbone engineering through selenomethionine-mediated incorporation of Freidinger lactams. Angewandte Chemie-International Edition 2018, 57, 8697-8701.
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Silvestri, Anthony P.; Cistrone, Philip A.; Dawson, Philip E. Adapting the glaser reaction for bioconjugation: robust access to structurally simple, rigid linkers. Angewandte Chemie-International Edition 2017, 56, 10438-10442.
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Reichart, Timothy M.; Baksh, M. M.; Rhee, J. K.; Fiedler, Jason D.; Sligar, S. G.; Finn, M. G.; Zwick, Michael B.; Dawson, Philip E. Trimerization of the HIV transmembrane domain in lipid bilayers modulates broadly neutralizing antibody binding. Angewandte Chemie-International Edition 2016, 55, 2688-2692.
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