Summer Science Program in Biochemistry 2017

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About

The Summer Science Program in Biochemistry and Drug Discovery is a 6 week residential research experience hosted on the Purdue campus for talented high school students (mostly rising seniors) from across the country and around the world. In 2017, 24 students will participate, and working in groups of 3 in the teaching lab facilities of the Department of Biochemistry, will purify and characterize an enzyme known to be important for crop infection by fungal pathogens. Each group will be assigned the putative ortholog of this enzyme from a different pathogen species. By exploring the enzymatic properties of their enzyme and modeling its 3-dimensional structure the goal for each group is to determine if their enzyme represents a reasonable target for development of new anti-fungal compounds to protect valuable crops from devastating infections. More specifically, each group will study the specificity of their enzymes, how they can be inhibited by a collection of small molecules studied previously on a related enzyme, model the binding of the most effective inhibitors to their enzyme, and ultimately use this information to guide the design and optimization of new small molecules predicted to more effectively inhibit their enzymes. At the end of the summer program, each group will compile their results into a manuscript-style report to publish and make publicly available through the Purdue University Research Repository. 

Team

The Purdue University Research Repository (PURR) is a university core research facility provided by the Purdue University Libraries and the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research and Partnerships, with support from additional campus partners.