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As a senior with three semesters of research,
Dayle has affirmed her interest in bioorganic chemistry. This semester, under
the guidance of Dr. Matthew Fountain, Dayle is working on the synthesis of a
catechol C-nucleotide to study the binding of metals in DNA. A nucleoside is
composed of a heteronuclear base covalently bond to a deoxyribose sugar.
Replacing the naturally occurring nucleotides adenine, thiamine, cytosine, or
guanine with catechol enables the DNA to bind a metal or metal cation in the
helix of the DNA. Selecting different metals and metal cations one can study
charge transfer in DNA, develop light sensing switches, the detection of specific
DNA sequences and develop nanoelectronics. Dayle uses synthetic organic
chemistry to synthesize the nucleotides and uses NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance)
to look at the structure. Dayle is applying to graduate school at Purdue,
University of Virginia and Washington State, in a medicinal or synthetic organic
program.
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