Dr. Yun Ho Kim is an assistant professor of chemistry and his research area is Organic/Bio-organic/Protein Chemistry. One of his main research goals is to explore and understand the underlying physical and chemical principles that affect a protein structure as well as how these factors contribute to the overall stability of the structure once it is formed. In the longer term, this knowledge will be applied to practical purposes such as increasing protein stability and designing protein structures. In order to accomplish these objectives, the combined techniques of molecular biology, biophysics, organic and peptide chemistry will be employed.
Dr. Kim collaborates closely with Dr. Stites at the University of Arkansas to characterize the effects of the mutation on protein stability, association and structure by a variety of biophysical techniques such as Circular dichroism, NMR and fluorescence spectroscopy, analytical ultracentrifugation, dynamic light scattering, and calorimetry. Staphylococcal nuclease is a model protein in his laboratory because hundreds of mutants were made and characterized by Dr. Stites’ group at the University of Arkansas. Dr. Kim’s main interest in this research is chemical modification of proteins in the following areas: 1) methionine and/or cysteine oxidation/ reduction, an apparently important process in human disease and aging and 2) crosslinking the reaction of the protein at introduced cysteine residues.
Ribbon diagram of wild-type staphylococcal nuclease
Another main research goal is to study the naturally occurring potential anti-aging/anti-cancer drugs. Dr. Kim is particularly interested in Artemisia princeps because many of its extracts have been shown to be potential treatments for inflammation, cancer, and other disorders. Artemisinin (Anti-Malaria), flavonoid (anti-cancer), eupatiline (chemopreventive and cytotoxin) and many other components are the extracts from the Artemisia princeps. Dr. Kim’s main interest in this research is to 1) extract and purify the biological active component and test their antioxidant characteristics for further biological engineering process and 2) total synthesis of each natural product. NMR, Mass, HPLC, IR will be used as a primary chemical identification method.
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Artemisia princeps (sajabalssuk)