Peter Karuso
Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences
Macquarie University
Australia
Biography
Professor at Macquarie University
Research Interest
Our research interests lie in the application of small molecules to biological systems, which involves new and exciting multidisciplinary approaches incorporating molecular biology, organic synthesis, analytical chemistry, NMR spectroscopy, computational chemistry and biochemistry to solving medicinally relevant problems. We are particularly interested in marine natural products and fluorescent natural products, their biological activity, biosynthesis and most importantly, their modes of action as drugs and applications in biotechnology. We focus on changing the way people think about drug discovery by changing the way we work with the interactions between small molecules and biomolecules. This requires the development of new tools that accelerate our understanding of how drugs facilitate change in living systems. This paradigm shift in the relationship between chemical diversity and biological activity will lead to the reinvigoration of the pharmaceutical industry through the rapid development of new drugs based on natural products.
Publications
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Coghlan DR, Mackintosh JA, Karuso P. Mechanism of reversible fluorescent staining of protein with epicocconone. Organic letters. 2005 Jun 9;7(12):2401-4.
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Bell PJ, Karuso P. Epicocconone, A Novel Fluorescent Compound from the Fungus Epicoccum n igrum. Journal of the American Chemical Society. 2003 Aug 6;125(31):9304-5.
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Mackintosh JA, Choi HY, Bae SH, Veal DA, Bell PJ, Ferrari BC, Van Dyk DD, Verrills NM, Paik YK, Karuso P. A fluorescent natural product for ultra sensitive detection of proteins in oneâ€dimensional and twoâ€dimensional gel electrophoresis. Proteomics. 2003 Dec 1;3(12):2273-88.
