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Corrie group ::

Applications of organic chemistry to biological research

photo of Dr John Corrie

The core activity of my laboratory is Organic Chemistry, through which we aim to develop new reagents for investigation of biological problems. Applications of new reagents are pursued through an extensive range of collaborations, both within NIMR and elsewhere. An important feature of our approach is that the chemistry stands on its own merits and is generally published in specialist chemical journals. Although our focus is directed towards biology, it is important that our work is underpinned by detailed chemical understanding of the properties of newly-developed reagents. Therefore a significant proportion of our effort is devoted to this area, usually in collaboration with research groups outside NIMR.

The general areas of my laboratory's work are in photolabile precursors of biological effector compounds (so-called “caged compounds”) and in reactive fluorescent probes that can be used to label biological molecules.

Selected publications ::

  • Corrie, JET; Barth, A; Munasinghe, VRN; Trentham, DR and Hutter, MC (2003)
    Photolytic cleavage of 1-(2-nitrophenyl)ethyl ethers involves two parallel pathways and product release is rate-limited by decomposition of a common hemiacetal intermediate.
    Journal of the American Chemical Society 125, 8546-8554 PubMed abstract
  • Cavallo, L; Moore, MH; Corrie, JET and Fraternali, F (2004)
    Quantum mechanics calculations on rhodamine dyes require inclusion of solvent water for accurate representation of the structure.
    Journal of Physical Chemistry A 108, 7744-7751
  • Papageorgiou, G; Lukeman, M; Wan, P and Corrie, JE (2004)
    An antenna triplet sensitiser for 1-acyl-7-nitroindolines improves the efficiency of carboxylic acid photorelease.
    Photochemical and Photobiological Sciences 3, 366-73 PubMed abstract
  • Ferguson, RE; Sun, YB; Mercier, P; Brack, AS; Sykes, BD; Corrie, JET; Trentham, DR and Irving, M (2003)
    In situ orientations of protein domains: Troponin C in skeletal muscle fibers.
    Molecular Cell 11, 865-874
  • Forkey, JN; Quinlan, ME; Shaw, MA; Corrie, JET and Goldman, YE (2003)
    Three-dimensional structural dynamics of myosin V by single-molecule fluorescence polarization.
    Nature 422, 399-404 PubMed abstract
  • Mercier, P; Ferguson, RE; Irving, M; Corrie, JET; Trentham, DR and Sykes, BD (2003)
    NMR structure of a bifunctional rhodamine labeled N-domain of troponin C complexed with the regulatory "Switch" peptide from troponin I: Implications for in situ fluorescence studies in muscle fibers.
    Biochemistry 42, 4333-4348 PubMed abstract
[Page last updated: 22 Feb 2005]