1. Fundamentals of soft ionization - mass spectrometry (ESI- and MALDI-MS)
2. Chiral and biomimetic molecular recognition
3. Chiral, liquid, and gas chromatographic separations
4. Natural products isolation and characterization
   

Soft ionization sources, such as electrospray (ESI) and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI), can be tuned to detect and study noncovalently-bound ionic complexes by mass spectrometry.  This ability, combined with the analytical advantages of speed and sensitivity, allows for an efficient means to study such species under a variety of solution phase and gas phase conditions.  In our lab, we focus on biomimetic and chiral applications to: (i) advance the fundamentals of soft-ionization mass spectrometry and tandem mass spectrometry; (ii) develop novel analytical approaches to extract quantitative and qualitative information; and (iii) evaluate established and novel noncovalent interaction schemes of interest.  Biomimetic systems of interest range from simple small-molecule hydrogen-bonding schemes (e.g., guanidinium – oxoanion interactions) for studying fundamental aspects of ionization to complex cell-related interaction schemes (e.g., RGD - Integrin; drug delivery) with the purpose of advancing analytical capabilities in the biochemical arena.  Chiral recognition systems are of interest for developing useful screening protocols to evaluate new chiral selectors, focusing on extracting quantitative affinity and enantioselectivity information.  Through the course of this work, chromatographic separations and sample preparation techniques play an important role.  Also, active collaborations for acquiring novel molecules (e.g., from peptide synthesis) and complementary binding information (e.g., from NMR and computational means) are key aspects to evaluating and obtaining reliable results in our group.

Natural products isolation and characterization is important  for the discovery of new lead compounds with variable biochemical activity.  Efforts in our group range from the isolation of toxic constituents from Golden Algae,  known to be responsible for massive fish kills in Texas waterways and worldwide, to studying the wide array of phenolic and polyphenolic molecules in different fruits and vegetables, known to exhibit beneficial antioxidant and anticarcoinogenic properties.  The nature of this research draws on our combined expertise in chromatography and mass spectrometry.  A main goal is the isolation of such compounds for use as standards in quantitative analysis and biochemical activity studies.

Research group for Molecular Recognition Materials, Separation Science & Mass Spectrometry

Peptide and peptidomimetic sythesis

Department of Chemistry, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX