Access Type

Open Access Dissertation

Date of Award

January 2013

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Department

Chemistry

First Advisor

Mary Kay H. Pflum

Abstract

Phosphorylation is an important post-translational modification that plays a key role in a variety of signaling cascades and cellular functions. Kinases phosphorylate protein substrates in a highly regulated manner and are promiscuous. Understanding kinase-substrate specificity has been challenging and there is a need for new chemical tools. To this end we developed -phosphate modified ATP photocrosslinking analogs ATP-ArN3 and ATP-BP, that crosslink substrate and kinase in a phosphorylation dependent manner. We have successfully demonstrated that ATP-ArN3 and ATP-BP can be used with natural kinase and substrates using cell lysates in vitro. We used our approach to identify novel kinases of p53. One powerful feature of this methodology is we can obtain an atomic level snapshot of the interactions between proteins, when coupled with analytical techniques like Mass Spectrometry (MS). These tools will help us in validating our

understanding of protein-protein interactions, their role in signaling pathways and functioning of the cell.

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