News

A recent collaborative effort between the Derbyshire lab at Duke, Benoît Witkowski’s lab at the Pasteur Institute in Cambodia, and Dennis Kyle’s lab at the University of Georgia, Athens revealed that Plasmodium vivax, the leading cause of malaria morbidity, co-opts host aquaporin-3 (AQP3). Human AQP3 is recruited to the host-pathogen interface during the infection of liver and blood cells, including elusive dormant liver stage parasites and ex vivo blood isolates. Chemical inhibition of this protein… read more about Derbyshire Lab Targets Malaria Prevention »

At a very basic level, the digital technologies we depend on everyday operate by manipulating the charge of electrons. But a Duke chemist is searching for materials that would allow engineers to build electronics that can do more than that — which could open the door to faster computing, increased data storage, even entirely new kinds of technology. “In information storage, manipulating the ones and zeroes of binary data fundamentally involves controlling the charge of the electron,” said Michael Therien, the William R.… read more about Chemist Puts New Spin on Organic Materials »

The Beratan Lab, in collaboration with researchers Arizona State University, Pennsylvania State University and the University of California-Davis have studied how electrons flow though water molecules, a process crucial for the energy-generating machinery of living systems. The team discovered that the way that water molecules cluster on solid surfaces enables the molecules to be either strong or weak mediators of electron transfer, depending on their orientation. Read about their findings in Cell Press journal… read more about Beratan Lab and Collaborators Pile Water Chains Like Legos »

Congratulations to Matthew Becker and Michael Rubinstein for receipt of Duke Distinguished Professorships! This is a wonderful recognition of their contributions to the sciences and to Duke! Matt will be the Hugo L. Blomquist Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, effective September 1, 2020 and Michael will be the Aleksander S. Vesic Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Chemistry, Physics and Biomedical Engineering, effective July 1, 2020.   read more about Chemistry Faculty Receive Distinguished Professorships »

Congratulations to Professor Michael Therien! Prof. Therien has been selected as a Guggenheim Fellow for his research in to ambient-temperature spintronic materials and devices enabled by soft matter. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation selected Prof. Therien as one of just 175 diverse writers, scholars, artists, and scientists, drawn from 53 scholarly disciplines, based upon exceptional promise and previous accomplishments, such as his pioneering work in seeking new approaches to engineer… read more about Michael Therien Named 2020 Guggenheim Fellow »

Duke University has awarded distinguished professorships to 29 faculty members from eight Duke colleges and schools. While the annual University Distinguished Professors dinner will be postponed until social gathering restrictions are lifted, Provost Sally Kornbluth is ready to congratulate this year’s recipients now. “I am thrilled to honor this wonderful cohort of scholars, teachers, and members of the Duke community,” Kornbluth said. “Becoming a distinguished professor at Duke is a great achievement, and one that is… read more about Duke Awards 29 University Distinguished Professorships »

Looking for ways to maintain your mental and physical health in the time of coronavirus and social distancing? You could try some no-equipment workouts. Or visit a virtual museum. Or take some free online courses. Those are just a few of the wellness resources you will find from Wellness4Researchers, a social media campaign run by three Duke graduate students—Shreyas Hegde, Courtney Johnson, and Filippo Screpanti—and postdoctoral fellow Daniel Luo. The quartet created the campaign as their team project for the Emerging… read more about Graduate Students Turn Leadership Project into a Timely Wellness Resource for Students »

The Department is seeking to expand our undergraduate instructional abilities by hiring a colleague with strong commitments teaching and embracing a diverse and inclusive community of scholars. We invite applications for a regular rank, non-tenure track Professor of the Practice position to begin July 1, 2020.  The Professor of the Practice track at Duke is parallel to the tenure track, emphasizing teaching and pedagogy. This is a term appointment (four-year initial term, renewable upon review… read more about We Are Expanding our Undergraduate Program! Join our Team as a Professor of the Practice! »

A research team led by Professors Emily Derbyshire and Michael Fitzgerald has reported the mechanism of action of a dual-stage antimalarial drug clemastine using chemoproteomic methods. They have uncovered that clemastine selectively modulates the chaperonin TRiC in Plasmodium malaria parasites but not in humans. Their findings encourage future efforts to target parasite protein folding as a novel route to malarial control. Their successful implementation of an unbiased integrated chemoproteomic strategy… read more about A Parallel Chemoproteomic Strategy Identifies Plasmodium Chaperonin TRiC/CCT as a Target of a Dual-stage Antimalarial Agent Clemastine »

Professor Warren Warren has been awarded the 2020 Günther Laukien Prize for his contributions to nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).  Warren received the Laukien prize together with two other researchers from England and Russia for a technique they developed, called X-SABRE, that can create a 100,000-fold jump in signal strength with results that last for over an hour, for 1% of the cost of current methods. Warren and his team are working on scaling up the… read more about Warren Warren Receives Günther Laukien Prize »

Take a quick peek in to Prof. Patrick Charbonneau's efforts devoted to cracking glass in a You Tube video featured here on The Duke Daily!  Interested in learning more? The Simons Foundation has funded a collaborative devoted to Cracking the Glass Problem: https://scglass.uchicago.edu/.  Prof. Charbonneau and the Simons Team seek to understand why glass behaves in all the myriad ways it does and how its properties might be engineered for everything from building materials to… read more about Cracking the Glass with Prof. Patrick Charbonneau »

Research could help pave the way to more versatile, low-cost MRI for studying metabolic reactions in real-time Duke professor Warren Warren has been awarded the 2020 Günther Laukien Prize for his contributions to nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and its cousin, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRI, which uses magnetic fields and radio waves to measure signals from spinning protons, has been used in medicine since the 1980s as a noninvasive way to create pictures of the inside of the… read more about Duke Professor Warren Warren Wins Award for Magnetic Resonance »

A team led by Professors Jiyong Hong and Pei Zhou has reported the molecular structure of LpxH in complex with a sulfonyl piperazine inhibitor and the identification of small molecule LpxH inhibitors with improved activity. These findings will facilitate structure-based ligand design for LpxH and help development of novel antibiotics targeting emerging multidrug-resistant nosocomial Gram-negative pathogens.  Read more about their discovery in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, available… read more about Small Molecule Inhibitors Target a Key Enzyme in Lipid A Biosynthesis »

Prof. Amanda Hargrove has been named a 2020 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow! The fellowship acknowledges her work on the small-molecule targeting of RNA, which may hold the key to curing a number of hard-to-fight diseases. The Sloan Research Fellowships seek to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise.  These two-year fellowships are awarded yearly to 126 researchers in recognition of distinguished performance and a unique potential to make… read more about Hargrove Receives Sloan Award! »

An assistant professor in chemistry has been recognized by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for her “potential to revolutionize” the field. Amanda Hargrove has been named a 2020 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in Chemistry in honor of her success as a chemist. The fellowship acknowledges Hargrove’s work on the small-molecule targeting of RNA, which may hold the key to curing a number of hard-to-fight diseases. “Many of the drugs in our pharmacies today are molecules that work by binding to proteins,” said Katherine Franz,… read more about Amanda Hargrove Has a Target on Hard-to-Fight Diseases »

Recent work from the Derbyshire lab has led to a comprehensive view of the transcriptional dynamics of infection of liver cells by Plasmodium parasites, the causative agents of malaria.  Focusing on the parasite transcriptome, they identified clusters of genes functionally enriched for important liver-stage processes such as interactions with the host cell and redox homeostasis. Moreover, the group identified potential transcriptional factor - binding sites within these clusters, most which have… read more about Derbyshire Lab Illuminates the Early Stages of Plasmodium Liver Infection »

Senior Azim Dharani has been awarded a 2020 Churchill Scholarship to pursue a year of graduate study at Cambridge University in England (one of only 16 in the country!!). Azim, an Angier B. Duke scholar from Lewisville, Texas, is a chem major and computational biology and classical archaeology minor. The Churchill Scholarship program enables outstanding American students to conduct one year of graduate study in engineering, mathematics or the natural or physical sciences at Cambridge's Churchill College. Azim plans to… read more about Chem Major Awarded Churchill Scholarship »

Duke University senior Azim Dharani has been awarded a 2020 Churchill Scholarship to pursue a year of graduate study at Cambridge University in England.  Dharani, a senior Angier B. Duke scholar from Lewisville, Texas, is completing a major in chemistry and minors in computational biology and classical archaeology. He is the 22nd Duke undergraduate to receive this honor.  Dharani’s chemistry adviser and one of his recommenders, Stephen Craig, was Duke’s 12th recipient. “Azim and the Churchill Scholarship are… read more about Duke Senior Awarded Churchill Scholarship  »

Ph.D. student Yangju Lin has reported in J. Am. Chem. Soc. a new mechanoacid that is used to report whether, where, and when potentially damaging mechanical events occur in bulk materials (read here!). The same acid might also be used for self-healing and stress-responsive polymers.  Read more in a C&E News Highlight here.  We look forward to the upcoming JACS Spotlight highlighting the paper in the near future!   read more about Craig Group Opens Up Acid-generating Materials Response »

The Graduate School has announced the recipients of its 2020 Dean's Awards, which recognize outstanding efforts in mentoring, teaching, and creating an inclusive environment for graduate education at Duke. The recipients will be honored at a reception on Wednesday, March 25. Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring Faculty William Darity, Samuel DuBois Cook Distinguished Professor of Public Policy Jennifer Roizen, Assistant Professor of Chemistry David Wong, Susan Fox Beischer and George D. Beischer… read more about 10 Dean’s Awards Recipients Named for 2020 »

The Derbyshire lab has recently published a communication in Chembiochem investigating coculture growth dynamics of bacteria isolated from Anopheles mosquitoes, the main vector for the transmission of malaria. Analysis of growth interactions between a dominant microbiome species, Elizabethkingia anophelis, and other mosquito-associated bacteria reveals that E. anophelis inhibits a Pseudomonas sp. through an antimicrobial-independent mechanism. Further examination … read more about Derbyshire Lab Investigating Coculture Growth Dynamics of Bacteria Isolated from Anopheles Mosquitoes »

Higher education institutions like Duke are gateways to opportunity and success for many low-income and first-generation college students. They are also home to professors who once stood in those students’ shoes and used their education to get into academia. Here are some professors from Duke who were low-income, first-generation (LIFE) college students. Jen’nan Read: Sally Dalton Robinson professor of sociology, chair of the department of sociology Jen’nan Read was born in the United States and moved to… read more about Professors from low-income first-generation backgrounds are ready to help Duke students »

Courtney Johnson of the Welsher lab has developed a new strategy for improving the speed of laser scanning microscopy. The technique, called 3D Fast Acquisition Scan by z-Translating Raster (3D-FASTR), uses an electrically tunable lens (ETL) to generate a reproducible 3D sparse sampling pattern which fully and efficiently scans a volume in the fastest possible time without repeating until the volume is complete. This method has shown a 4-fold improvement in the volumetric imaging rate of live cells. The theory underlying 3D… read more about Welsher Lab Speeds Up Live Cell Imaging »

A team of current and former members of the Hargrove group led by Dr. Brittany Morgan and Bilva Sanaba has recently updated the RNA-targeted Bioactive Ligand Database (R-BIND) and made the database available in a user-friendly website platform! The R-BIND update showed that there were little to no changes in the physicochemical and spatial properties of RNA-targeted ligands despite an almost 50% increase in database size, further supporting the notion of a privileged chemical space for RNA-binding small molecules. The… read more about Hargrove Lab Develops an Interactive Database for the Exploration and Rational Design of RNA-targeted Small Molecules »

Congratulations to Professors Jie Liu, Bob Lefkowitz and David Mitzi! These chemists were named as Highly Cited Researchers by Web of Science, part of a select few who have been most frequently cited by their peers over the last decade. In 2019, fewer than 6,300, or 0.1%, of the world's researchers, across 21 research fields, have earned this exclusive distinction! Our chemists are among an elite group recognized for exceptional research influence, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers… read more about Chemists Named Highly Cited Researchers in 2019 »

Dr. Neeraj Patwardhan, Zhengguo (Alex) Cai, and Aline Umuhire Juru of the Hargrove lab have built a diverse compound library based on amiloride, a previously known RNA-targeted scaffold. They used a fluorescent indicator displacement assay to screen the library and quantified the binding profiles of the hit compounds. A cheminformatics study and quantitative modeling elucidated the key factors involved in small molecule recognition for different RNA targets, leading to the successful prediction of a test… read more about Hargrove Lab Elucidates Driving Factors of Amilorides Interacting with HIV RNA Targets »

Dr. Lizzie Hunsaker of the Franz lab has discovered that Candida albicans comprehensively remodels handling of transition metals in response to antifungal drug stress. Specifically, they find that treatment with the antifungal drug fluconazole increases the cell’s need for transition metals and regulation of metal homeostasis is crucial for C. albicans to meet these needs. The findings suggest that inducing vulnerabilities in metal handling pathways could be leveraged to… read more about Franz lab uncovers adaptation strategies employed by fungal pathogen Candida albicans during drug stress »

Duke Chemistry major and this year’s Nobel prize winner in Physiology or Medicine, Bill Kaelin (T ’79), pictured with his Chemistry classmate Celeste McMichael Rohlfing at their 25th Duke reunion.  Bill and Celeste were undergraduate researchers in the laboratory of Professor Peter Smith at Duke.  For more information read the article in Duke Today.  read more about Bill Kaelin (T '79) wins Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine »

Dr. William G. Kaelin Jr., a Duke trustee and alumnus, was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Kaelin received both his undergraduate and medical degrees from Duke and is a professor in the Department of Medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard Medical School and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Kaelin shared the prize with Sir Peter Ratcliffe of Oxford University and Gregg Semenza of Johns Hopkins University for research on how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability… read more about Duke Alumnus, Trustee William Kaelin Receives Nobel Prize for Medicine »