October Seminar with Dr. Cologna of UIC

Stephanie Cologna
Assistant Professor at UIC

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Integrating Proteomics and Lipidomics to Understand Niemann-Pick Disease, Type C

 

ABSTRACT:

Mass spectrometry has emerged as a leading technology for biomarker discovery and to identify altered pathways in human diseases. Our laboratory studies Niemann-Pick Disease, Type C (NPC), a fatal, genetic, neurodegenerative disorders. Using combined approaches including mass spectrometry-based quantitative proteomics, lipidomics and lipid imaging, we have identified new markers of NPC and mapped altered lipids in brain tissue from the NPC mouse models. These markers provide insight into the biochemical alterations occurring following the primary genetic defect and can be used in future drug discovery studies.

Friday, October 5 at 1PM in McGowan South 103

Interested in presenting at the Science & Research Showcase?

Easy access to the literature from home

Universities subscribe to a variety of journal articles and databases that are extremely valuable for research and learning, and DePaul is no different. However, you aren’t always on campus to use them, so how can you access DePaul’s journal subscriptions from home?

It turns out its fairly straightforward to set up for any DePaul student, faculty, or staff!

You should check out the Chemistry Library Website, which has a variety of great information, but we will focus one key tool below:

Google Scholar – This is the premier research tool to find peer-reviewed articles. It’s like google but the output only includes journal articles and similar scholarly documents, and leaves off regular websites. You can use it on campus or from home to get access to articles while off campus! To set it up properly, do the following (this can be done at home too):

1. go to the Google Scholar website: https://scholar.google.com/
2. In the top left corner, click on the menu dropdown:
3. In that menu, select “settings”:

4. In the settings menu, select “library links” on the left, and search for “DePaul University”. Then select both options and hit Save. The “full-text” is the most important one:

Ok! You are all set. Now, go back to Google Scholar and search for something. For example, you could search for “Alkyne Reduction” and you would see the page shown below. If you want to access an article off campus, click the “Find full-text @ DePaul” link and enter your campus connect login as needed. It will take you to the article’s page, with full access to the article! Remember you can save pdfs to your computer to look at the later.

What can you do if DePaul doesn’t have access and that link doesn’t show up??? One option is to see if the pdf is at academia.edu or researchgate.net, two websites where people sometimes post articles. Those links also show up on a Google Scholar Search:

If it is nowhere online, you can request it through the library, and they will look for it and send you a pdf within a few days. Here’s how to do that from Google Scholar. Click the “>>” symbol beneath the abstract:

Then select “DePaul Library Holdings“. It will send you to this page:

Under “Check availability”, select “Request via Illiad” and follow the directions to request a copy. If the library can find it through their library partners, they will send it to you.

So there you have it! We highly recommend using this approach, and also becoming familiar with Google Scholar, Endnote, and SciFinder. We’ll cover more on of these tools future blog posts, like how to use Endnote and Google scholar to easily cite articles and make bibliographies. In addition you should definitely check out the SciFinder setup pages at the Chemistry Library Website and get setup with that tool as well!

DePaul Chemistry Father and Son at the ACS Meeting in August 2018

On Tuesday, August 21 DePaul University Chemistry Department alumnus Dr. Michael Kharas met with his father, our very own Professor Gregory Kharas at the 256th ACS National Meeting & Exposition in Boston. Michael gave an invited talk entitled “Towards therapeutic targeting of the MUSASHI RNA binding protein network” in the morning at a Biology Division. His father’s work was presented by two posters on “Synthesis and styrene copolymerization of novel trisubstituted ethylenes” at the ACS Polymer Chemistry Division session in the evening. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Employees Bill and Sara also presented the posters. Both received their MS degrees from working in Dr. Greg Kharas’s lab at DePaul and currently coordinate lab preparation, safety, instrumentation maintenance, and TA hiring and management for our Department.

Dr. Michael Kharas is an Associate Member of Molecular Pharmacology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Associate Professor Weill Cornell Pharmacology Graduate Program, New York. If you are curious about his research, here is a link to his lab. We are proud to have him an as Alumnus and we hope that our current students look to him and our other alumni as resources when they consider the next steps in their careers.

Also, if you are a student researcher, you should definitely consider going to a conference! There will be several upcoming opportunities, including CAURS the the Great Lakes Regional ACS Meeting. Talk to your research adviser about it well in advance to start planning.

Join us for the first seminar of the year with Martin Conda-Sheridan of the University of Nebraska Medical Center

Martin Conda-Sheridan
Assistant Professor
Pharmaceutical Sciences
University of Nebraska Medical Center

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Friday, September 14 at 1PM in McGowan South 103

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Synthesis and antimicrobial evaluation of the Endophenazines and their analogues

ABSTRACT:

Hospital- and community-associated bacterial infections caused by pathogens such as methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and escherichia coli (E. coli) are a reason of concern to people in the USA and around the world. These infections have become increasingly difficult to treat due to the tendency of bacteria to develop resistance and to form biofilms. Our lab is developing an antibacterial program using the phenazine natural products as active scaffolds. In this talk, we will introduce the total synthesis of two members of the endophenazine family. We will also present their biological activity against MRSA, E.coli and their toxicity towards human cells. In addition, we will present preliminary studies to unravel the mechanism of action of the molecules and the ability of bacteria to develop resistance to the molecules. Finally, we will present data regarding their metabolic stability.

DePaul Chemistry Club

Welcome to the start of a new quarter! Hopefully, you are getting settled in all of your classes and are ready to learn. The DePaul Chemistry Club wants to welcome you to the new year and let you know how to contact them if you are interested in joining:

Calling all chemistry majors, minors, and interested students of all majors! The DePaul Chemistry Club is a group of passionate individuals who love everything related to chemistry and science. Monthly meetings are held to discuss advances and popular happenings in chemistry today as well as looking at interesting ways chemistry is around us every day. Fun activities and snacks are always planned. If you’re interested in joining, feel free to email us at dpuchemclub@gmail.com or follow us on social media!

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