Professor Justin DuBois
Professor Justin DuBois
School of Humanities & Sciences
Stanford University
Toxins as Targets for Chemical Synthesis and Discovery Biology
We are compelled by both the intricate molecular architectures and unique biological activity of a class of natural products known as bis-guanidinium toxins. These compounds act as selective inhibitors of voltage-gated sodium channels, large membrane protein complexes responsible for initiating and propagating electrical impulses in neuronal and cardiac cells. Our group has endeavored to devise efficient and flexible multi-step syntheses of these targets that can enable structure-activity studies and the development of high-precision tool compounds for manipulating sodium channel function. This lecture will detail such efforts and present recent work to understand how certain organisms evolved resistance to these acute poisons.
Professor Justin DuBois
Justin Du Bois was born August 23, 1969 in Los Angeles, California. He received his B.S. degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1992, where he conducted undergraduate research with Professor Ken Raymond. In 1997 he earned his Ph. D. from the California Institute of Technology under the direction of Professor Erick Carreira. Following a two year NIH postdoctoral position with Professor Stephen Lippard at MIT, he joined the faculty at Stanford University as an assistant professor. In 2005, he was promoted to the associate level. In addition, Justin is faculty by courtesy in the Dept. of Chemical & Systems Biology at Stanford University, a founding member of the NSF Center for Selective C-H Functionalization, an executive committee member of the Stanford Institute for Chemical Biology, and the founder of the Center for Molecular Analysis and Design at Stanford University.
331 Smith Hall