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Professor Lenore Martin

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Thanks to the work of Tripti and my two current graduate students Abraham Herrara and Sunandha Acharya, the AMPed database has migrated to a permanent home at URI with the domain name amped.uri.edu. This will enable my research group to maintain our current high profile as leaders in the research area of design and synthesis of novel antimicrobial peptides and to address the crisis in antimicrobial resistance that threatens the future of medicine. Our peptide molecular modeling project in collaboration with Faramarz Joodaki and Professor Michael Greenfield of Chemical Engineering. On the training level, I have an enthusiastic group of Biochemistry undergraduates who persist in doing many antimicrobial testing experiments in my lab despite the disruptive move of my laboratory to Woodward Hall after 13 years in Morrill hall. We are currently analyzing their data from the last 2 academic years, and then publish their results soon.

Research Interest

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We investigate the complex interactions between biopolymers peptides, proteins, DNA, RNA, lipids, and carbohydrates in order to understand cellular physiology at the molecular level. Our research at URI has focused on using solid-phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) to prepare diverse combinatorial libraries of both naturally-occurring and engineered peptides for further study. We have designed antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) based upon pleurocidin, isolated from Winter Flounder, to combat the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance in pathogenic microbes, and topoisomerase inhibitors based on natural products for use in cancer chemotherapy. Our bioanalytical chemistry research has involved the development of novel methods for monitoring dynamic properties of peptides, proteins, lipids and DNA using capillary electrophoresis (CE), circular dichroism (CD), and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. The molecular modeling/bioinformatics research area aims to expand the application of molecular mechanics techniques in order to model dynamic processes in the biopolymers we investigate.

Location

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Address: Woodward Hall
9 E Alumni Ave, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI 02881, USA

Email: amped@uri.edu