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Erome Hankore

@eromehankore.bsky.social

Incoming Assistant Professor | Biological chemist👩🏾‍🔬| chemical biology, biocatalysis, natural products, kinases | @waynestatechem

42 Posts95 Follower174 Folgt
John Rubinstein@johnrubinstein.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Sad news on the passing of Prof. Andreas Engel, a pioneer in the field of cryo-EM (shared with the 3DEM community by Henning Stahlberg). Andreas' kindness, warmth, and enthusiasm for science and his colleagues will be missed.

Dear colleagues, With deep sadness I share the news that Andreas Engel passed away last Wednesday, at the age of 82, after a courageous fight against an aggressive caner. Only half a year ago, he was out hiking in the Italian mountains with his wife Barbara, walking 160 km in a single week. Andreas trained as a physicist in Bern, Switzerland, before heading to John Hopkins University in Baltimore for his postdoctoral work. He then led a research group at the Biozentrum in Basel, and in 1985 took on the role of a group leader in research and development at Ilford Ltd. in Fribourg, Switzerland. In 1987, he joined forces with his colleague Ueli Aebi to establish the Maurice E. Müller Institute at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel. Together, Ueli and Andreas served as professors for structural biology there for almost a quarter century, leaving a lasting mark on the field of structural biology as we know it today. Andreas Engel was a true pioneer. He was among the first to apply atomic force microscopy (AFM) with the tip operating under water, and one of the earliest researchers to perform 3D reconstructions using scanning transmission electron microscopy, achieving remarkable high-resolution maps of porin 2D crystals by STEM. He became a leading expert in membrane protein 2D crystallization, and his group played a key role in the determination of the first aquaporin structure, in collaboration with Peter Agre and Yoshinori Fujiyoshi. As he approached retirement from Basel, Andreas founded the Center for Cellular Imaging and NanoAnalytics (C-CINA) of the University of Basel, which in 2009 operated among others one of the very early Titan Krios instruments. From 2008 also held a professorship at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, followed by a position at TU Delft in the Netherlands in 2013. In 2020, he was among the founding members of CryoWrite, a company in Basel that he led as CEO until recently. His contributions to science, to the tools of str…Photo of Andreas Engel
Erome Hankore@eromehankore.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Really great talk on D-amino acids. I especially enjoyed learning about the role of D-amino acids in neurobiology. Truly fascinating!

@wsuchemistry.bsky.social@waynestatechem.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Great talk from Daniel Armstrong, the Welch Distinguished Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Arlington, on his research: "Analysis of Chiral Biomolecules Including Peptide Epimers and Their Role in Metabolism and Disease.” Thanks for visiting #wsuchemistry! #ChemSky

Tom Linz standing with guest lecturer Daniel Armstrong in Schaap Hall
@wsuchemistry.bsky.social@waynestatechem.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Check out @eromehankore.bsky.social’s postdoctoral work on enediynes is in the ACS Journal of Natural Products. Erome continues her research as a Faculty Fellow collaborating with the Pflum Lab at #wsuchemistry. #ChemSky doi.org/10.1021/acs....

Functional and Structural Studies on the Esperamicin Thioesterase and Progress toward Understanding Enediyne Core Biosynthesis

Enediynes are among the most potent antitumor and antibacterial natural products. Studies on their biosynthetic pathways have identified a shared, linear polyene precursor generated from an iterative type I polyketide synthase (PKSE) as the source of the enediyne warhead. A key step is the release of this polyene from the PKSE by a discrete thioesterase (TE). Here, we used X-ray crystallography, site-directed mutagenesis, and heterologous coexpression of PKSEs and TEs to elucidate how enediyne TEs mediate the production of the polyene. We solved the structure of wild-type EspE7 from esperamicin producer Actinomodura verrucosospora. The substrate binding pocket was also defined upon serendipitous cocrystallization of an EspE7 mutant with a fatty acyl-CoA ligand. Structural data and in vitro activity assays with EspE7 mutants provide strong evidence that Glu68 in EspE7 and the analogous Glu residue in other enediyne TEs functions as a key catalytic residue, thus supporting a hydrolysis mechanism for enediyne TEs that aligns with that of Pseudomonas sp. 4-HB-CoA TE. Furthermore, combinations of 9- and 10-membered enediyne PKSEs and TEs produced 1,3,5,7,9,11,13-pentadecaheptaene (1) as the major product. Thus, the data further support previous conclusions that 1 serves as the sole precursor for the biosynthesis of all enediyne cores.

doi.org

Erome Hankore@eromehankore.bsky.social · 10mo ago

1/3 You can now read about my postdoctoral work on enediynes in the ACS Journal of Natural Products! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Functional and Structural Studies on the Esperamicin Thioesterase and Progress toward Understanding Enediyne Core Biosynthesis

Enediynes are among the most potent antitumor and antibacterial natural products. Studies on their biosynthetic pathways have identified a shared, linear polyene precursor generated from an iterative ...

pubs.acs.org

Erome Hankore@eromehankore.bsky.social · last yr.

Check out this cool paper from Katherine Ryan's lab on the biosynthesis of a dipeptide natural product negamycin by a lysine aminomutase and a newly identified hydrazine-forming enzyme NegJ. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A heme-dependent enzyme forms the hydrazine in the antibiotic negamycin - Nature Chemical Biology

Negamycin is a decades-old antibiotic that can promote readthrough of premature stop codons and possesses a structure that contains an unusual N–N bond. Now, the long-mysterious negamycin gene cluster...

nature.com

@wsuchemistry.bsky.social@waynestatechem.bsky.social · last yr.

This month we honor the important achievements of black scientists. We would love to see Bettye Washington Greene make this list in the future. #BlackHistoryMonth #ChemSky

American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology@asbmb.bsky.social · last yr.

Join us in celebrating #BlackHistoryMonth by honoring the important achievements in the life sciences made by Black scientists! From groundbreaking discoveries to inspiring innovation, their legacy continues to inspire future generations to push the boundaries of science. #STEM bit.ly/415kqNR

ASBMB created a timeline highlighting important achievements in the life sciences made by Black scientists.
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Ben Bellenie@chemb.bsky.social · 2y ago

Trimethyltin hydroxide is a very nice reagent for mild methyl ester hydrolysis (Nicolaou Angew. 2005) - but also pretty toxic. Anyone any experience of the best way of removing the tin? The paper says you can aq wash and get it mostly clean, but mostly clean still has a few mol% tin species #chemsky

Phil Knutson, PhD@philknutson.bsky.social · 2y ago

Industry perspective here. We do yearly scanning of all barcodes to track what chemicals we have/no longer have. We are also beginning a new rule that chemicals over 10 years old must go, very few exceptions. This will eventually go to 5 years. This keeps inventory at a manageable and safe level

Chemistring@chemistring.bsky.social · 2y ago

Exactly! I'll note that most of this is aspirational for labs I've worked in (learn from our mistakes), but staying ahead of the chaos saves duplicate orders, time wasted searching for migratory bottles, and delays because the chemical you need was used up and not deleted from inventory/reordered.

Erome Hankore@eromehankore.bsky.social · 2y ago

pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Divergent Total Synthesis of Isoflavone Natural Products and Their Potential as Therapeutic Agents for TTR Amyloidosis

We have achieved the divergent total synthesis of nine isoflavone natural products 1–9 starting from commercially available 2,4,6-trihydroxyacetophenone as a starting material. The isoflavone skeleton of 1–9 was constructed by the Suzuki–Miyaura coupling reaction as the key reaction. Investigation of the potential of 1–9 as therapeutic agents for transthyretin (TTR) amyloidosis revealed that millexatin F (3) showed the best efficacy in ex vivo competitive binding experiments and thioflavin-T fluorescence studies. Therefore, millexatin F (3) is promising as a seed compound for a novel TTR amyloidosis therapeutic agent.

pubs.acs.org

Erome Hankore@eromehankore.bsky.social · 2y ago

1. You have limited time to make scientific contributions. Do the big things 2.Go back and forth between day and night science 3. Give adequate attention to the thinking and analysis aspects of research 4. Do your go-no-go experiments early on to avoid wasting time 5. Face risk early And more 👇🏾

Itai Yanai@itaiyanai.bsky.social · 2y ago

The goal is not to have a zero risk project; those are generally not worth working on. People with a good relationship with risk are definitely not avoiding it. They are super honest about it and they basically make it their goal to slowly chip away at it. nightscience.buzzsprout.com/1744020/epis...