Research conducted in the Keillor Lab can be divided into two areas. The first touches on several aspects of enzymology – studying the detailed mechanisms by which enzymes function, synthesizing and testing inhibitors with therapeutic potential, and engineering enzymes for practical catalytic applications. The second area involves the development of methods for labelling specific proteins in living cells, for the subsequent study of their structure, localisation and trafficking. The methodology used in the Keillor Lab for both of these two lines of research comprises several different disciplines, including organic synthesis, molecular biology and the spectroscopy implicated in detailed kinetic studies.
Selected publications
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S. K. I. Watt, J. G. Charlebois, C. N. Rowley, J. W. Keillor: “A mechanistic study of thiol addition to N-acryloylpiperidine”, Org. Biomol. Chem. 2023, 21, 2204-2212.
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E. W. J. Gates, K. Mansour, S. E. Samani, S. Shad, M. T. Kaartinen, J. W. Keillor: “Peptidic Inhibitors and Fluorescent Probe for the Selective Inhibition and Labelling of Factor XIIIa Transglutaminase”, Molecules 2023, 28, 1634.
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N. M. R. McNeil, N. Firoozi, E. W. J. Gates, N. J. Cundy, J. Leccese, S. Eisinga, J. D.A. Tyndall, G. Adhikary, R. L. Eckert, J. W. Keillor: “Structure-Activity Relationships of N-Terminal Variants of Peptidomimetic Tissue Transglutaminase Inhibitors”, Eur. J. Med. Chem. 2022, 232, 114172-114195.
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K. K. Tsao, A. C. Lee, K. É. Racine, J. W. Keillor : “Site-specific fluorogenic protein labelling agent for bioconjugation”, Biomolecules 2020, 10, 369-384.
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S. K. Oteng-Pabi, C. M. Clouthier, J. W. Keillor : “Design of a Glutamine Substrate Tag Enabling Protein Labelling Mediated by Bacillus subtilis Transglutaminase”, PLoS ONE 2018, 13, e0197956.