THE SEMINAR SCHEDULED FOR APRIL 28, 2020 HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
We hope to reschedule Jon Sczepanski's visit to NYU soon. Please check back.
Jonathan Sczepanski, of Texas A&M University, will deliver a seminar entitled, "Synthetic Chromatin and Mirror Image Oligonucleotides." Hosted by Bobby Arora.
For more information about Jonathan Sczepanski, click here.
Abstract: The first part of this seminar will focus on our efforts to uncover the molecular
mechanisms underlying the regulation of DNA repair proteins within chromatin.
To facilitate these studies, we developed a “plug-and-play” approach for
incorporating site-specifically positioned DNA modifications into nucleosome
arrays reconstituted in vitro (i.e. synthetic chromatin). This approach allows
precise control over the environment of a particular DNA modification, enabling a
detailed analysis of the activities of associated repair proteins in a variety of
prescribed chromatin states, both chemical and structural. Details regarding
these studies, as well as our recent efforts to expand the plug-and-play approach
into other areas of chromatin biochemistry, will be presented.
During the second part of this seminar, I will describe “heterochiral” nucleic
acid technologies, which merge native D-DNA with its bioorthogonal enantiomer
L-DNA in order to achieve novel functionality. In particular, we recently reported a
strand-displacement methodology for transferring sequence information between
oligonucleotide enantiomers, enabling the construction of DNA-based molecular
circuits having fully-interfaced D-DNA and L-DNA components. On the basis of
this approach, we have now successfully interfaced D-nucleic acid biomarkers
(e.g. microRNAs) with L-DNA-based circuits in vitro and within living cells, laying
the foundation for future development of advanced diagnostic devices. Details
regarding our recent progress in this area will be presented.
Relevant publications:
Deckard, C. E. † , Banerjee, D. R. † , Sczepanski, J. T.* Chromatin Structure and the Pioneering Transcription
Factor FOXA1 Regulate TDG-Mediated Removal of 5-formylcytosine from DNA. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 141,
14110–14114 (2019).
Banerjee, D. R. † , Deckard, C. E. † , Elinsky, M. B., Batteas, J. D., Sczepanski, J. T.* A Plug-and-Play
Approach for Preparing Chromatin Containing Site-Specific DNA Modifications: The Influence of Chromatin
Structure on Base Excision Repair. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 140, 8260–8267 (2018).
Kabza, A. M., Young, B. E., Sczepanski, J. T.* Heterochiral DNA Strand-Displacement Circuits. J. Am.
Chem. Soc. 139, 17715–17718 (2017).
Zhong, W., Sczepanski, J. T.* A Mirror Image Fluorogenic Aptamer Sensor for Live-Cell Imaging of
MicroRNAs. ACS Sens. 4, 566–570 (2019).