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Neal Zondlo receives NSF Career Award
The five-year, $550,000 award will support Zondlo's research in the design of hyper-stable proteins for use in nanotechnology and pharmaceuticals and also the development of a new curriculum initiative designed to heighten interest in chemistry among the nation's high school students. The award is one of the National Science Foundation's highest honors for young faculty members, and recognizes and supports the early career development activities of those teachers and scholars who are most likely to become the academic leaders of the future. Zondlo is one of four young UD faculty members to have received the award this year, joining Joseph Fox, also an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, Xinyan Deng, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and Balaji Panchapakesan, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. “I am extremely excited and certainly very honored to have this opportunity,” Zondlo said of the NSF award. Zondlo is conducting important research to better understand the structure and function of proteins so that scientists can learn to control their structure and develop new proteins that have novel functions. “The human genome project was a wonderful achievement and provided an understanding of genes,” Zondlo said. “But genes do not function in and of themselves; genes encode for proteins. Understanding the structure and function of proteins is a central and extremely challenging problem. This is especially true since proteins are modified within cells, in response to biological signals." Zondlo said the thrust of his work is to develop approaches to use subtle structural and electronic changes to control protein structure. “For example, we have shown that by replacing a single hydrogen atom with a fluorine atom in a protein, the structure and stability of a protein can be dramatically changed,” he said. “Moreover, which hydrogen atom is replaced with a fluorine atom dramatically affects the protein structure and stability.” In addition, he said his research has shown that by changing the pH of a solution, adding one hydrogen atom to a protein, the structure of a protein can be significantly altered. “These changes alter the electronic properties of the proteins, changing their structure,” Zondlo said. “The electronic properties of molecules, that is, whether they are electron-rich molecules or electron-poor molecules, significantly affect their structure and how they interact with other molecules.” He noted that polyphenols, the most prominent anti-cancer compounds in red wine and green tea, are electron-rich molecules that bind to electron-poor proteins in the body. Oxidants change polyphenols from electron-rich to electron-poor molecules, in turn changing how they interact with proteins. “We are developing similar electronic approaches to prepare hyperstable proteins for medicine and nanotechnology, proteins whose structures are tunable by external cues, and chemosensors,” he said. Of specific interest to Zondlo and his research team is the function of protein in Alzheimer's disease. The changed structure of a particular protein is believed to set off the degenerative brain disease. “Understanding is critical to knowing why Alzheimer's develops and to devise treatments,” he said. A key aspect of NSF Career Award funding is in education and Zondlo is passionate about the need to improve the teaching of chemistry in high schools to develop new generations of students who take an active interest in the field. That passion is generated by personal experience. “In too many high schools, chemistry as it is being taught is boring,” Zondlo said. “My high school chemistry class was boring. There was not a connection between chemistry and the things I found most interesting, which were in the area of medical research.” High schools tend to have biology courses and chemistry courses as completely separate entities, and Zondlo said it is important to break down those walls. “In reality, the world is interdisciplinary,” he said. “You need to understand chemistry in biological terms, and biology in chemical terms.” With input from high school teachers in the pilot program, Zondlo plans to develop a web-based curriculum to connect chemistry and biology and to help improve course content. “When students see chemistry as taught with biological implications, they get excited,” he said. “They see the importance of chemistry when it is related to biology. Students will not enter the sciences if they think it is boring, and from a personal point of view, I want the best students to be pursuing chemistry.” Zondlo fears that “every year we are losing opportunities for students to have a deeper appreciation for chemistry,” adding, “That needs to change. Chemistry is central to everything we do, and this need must be addressed.” Beyond encouraging students in the field, Zondlo said the development of a new curriculum is important to help the general public better understand the basic principles of chemistry. “If we want people to be informed citizens, capable of making sound decisions as science advances, we need make sure the population has a bedrock understanding of and can appreciate the interconnectedness of chemistry and biology,” he said. Zondlo hopes to develop a curriculum that will be “appropriate and user friendly,” and one through which various lessons and activities can easily be incorporated by high school teachers in their classrooms. Zondlo received a bachelor's degree from Rice University and a doctorate from Yale University, where he also was a National Science Foundation predoctoral fellow. He was a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University before joining the UD faculty in 2001. Article by Neil Thomas |
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