Dr. Catherine A. Sarisky

Assistant Professor of Chemistry

Education

New College of the University of South Florida
BA in Chemistry, 1995
California Institute of Technology
Ph. D. in Chemistry, 2005

Current & Recent Courses

Chem 111 - General Chemistry I
Chemistry 112L - General Chemistry II Lab
Chem 221-222 - Organic Chemistry I-II
Chem 221L-2222L - Organic Chemistry Lab I-II
Chem 299 - Special Topics in Pharmaceutical Chemistry
IL-177 - Pharmaceuticals in the USA

Research Interests

Biosynthesis of purines in Archaea. My student collaborators and I are studying how microorganisms called Archaea convert available resources into purines, which are required for DNA and RNA synthesis. A description of my work with students can be found here.

Publications

Hancock AN, Coleman RS, Johnson RT, Sarisky CA, and Johann TW. (2008). Investigations of the roles of Arginine 115 and Lysine 120 in the Active site of 5,10-methenyltetrahydrofolate synthetase from Mycoplasma pneumoniae. Protein J. 27, 303-308. (Abstract)

Offredi F., Dubail F., Kischel P., Sarisky C. A., Stern A. S., Van de Weerdt C., Hoch J. C., Prosperi C., Francois J. M., Mayo S. L., Martial J. A. (2002). De novo Backbone and Sequence Design of an Idealized beta-barrel Protein: Evidence of Stable Tertiary Structure. J. Mol. Biol. 325, 163-174.

Sarisky C. A. and Mayo S. L. (2001). The ββα fold: Explorations in sequence space. J. Mol. Biol. 307(5), 1411-8.

Ross S., Sarisky C. A., Su A., Mayo S. L. (2000). Designed protein G core variants fold to native-like structures: sequence selection by ORBIT tolerates variation in backbone specification. Protein Sci. 10(2), 450-4.

Hammack B., Attfield K., Clayton D., Dec E., Dong A., Sarisky C., Bowler B. E. (1998). The magnitude of changes in guanidine-HCl unfolding m-values in the protein, iso-1-cytochrome c, depends upon the substructure containing the mutation. Protein Sci. 7, 1789-1795.

Dahiyat B. I., Sarisky C. A., and Mayo S. L. (1997). De novo protein design: Towards fully automated sequence selection. J. Mol. Biol. 273(4), 789-796.

Recent Presentations and Invited talks

"De novo purine biosynthesis in archaea: still more to learn." Gordon Research Conference: Archaea, Waterville Valley, NH, July 2009.
"Purine biosynthesis in Archaea: Variations on a Theme." ACS National meeting, New Orleans, April 2008
"Online homework: Lessons Learned." ACS National Meeting, New Orleans, April 2008.
"When Chemists do Biology: Tales from the Interface." Virginia Tech Visiting Scholar Seminar Series. November 17, 2005. (Abstract)

Recent Awards & Honors

Research Grant from the Jeffress Memorial Trust, 2007. Renewed 2009.
Faculty Starter Grant, Roanoke College, 2007
Research Grant from The Thomas F. and Kate Miller Jeffress Memorial Trust (with T. Johann), 2005
Burroughs-Wellcome Computational Molecular Biology Fellowship, 2000