Research Interests
Chemical transformations that create non-natural covalent bonds on biomolecules are truly empowering as they enable new approaches to the study of biological processes, drug discovery and therapeutic design, as well as the design of functional materials. However, reactions that modify biomolecules must meet a stringent set of requirements in order to function in complex biological environments and thus their development presents a unique and exciting chemical challenge.
The overarching research objectives in the Taylor group are to (1) design new and mechanistically unusual reactions that chemically modify biomolecules and (2) to apply them towards the study of how biological systems work and change dynamically in a native environment such as a living cell. Spanning the chemistry-biology interface in this fashion creates a highly multidisciplinary and collaborative environment where lines of inquiry merge diverse concepts ranging from physical organic chemistry, mechanistic photochemistry and synthesis to cellular/molecular biology and proteomics.
We have developed several mechanistically unique chemical approaches to modifying biological matter. Click on box below to further explore this chemistry and how we apply these to answer biological questions:
Funding
We are grateful to the following organizations that have/are funding our research: