Selenium Chemistry as a Tool to Study Protein Science


Norman Metanis, Institute of Chemistry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel (metanis@mail.huji.ac.il)

Selenium occurs rarely in natural proteins, but is becoming a commonly used element in unnatural contexts to aid in the study of protein structure and function. In its natural context, selenium's role remains uncovered in half of the 25 human selenoproteins. With the aid of chemical protein synthesis, a full characterization of many of these proteins looms close on the horizon. In unnatural contexts, selenium serves as a traceless handle in native chemical ligations and as a “chaperone” for oxidative protein folding. New amino acids containing selenium allow previously unfavorable protein syntheses to occur in good yields. We will discuss selenium's contributions to protein chemistry thus far, as well as its potential in future applications.

References

1. Mousa, R., Lansky, S., Shoham, G., and Metanis, N. Chem. Sci. 9, 4814-4820 (2018)
2. Mousa, R., Dardashti, R.N., and Metanis, N. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 56, 15818-15827 (2017)
   
3. Dardashti, R.N. and Metanis, N. Bioorg. & Med. Chem, 25, 4983-4989 (2017)
4. Dery, L., Reddy, P.S., Dery, S., Mousa, R., Ktorza, O., Talhami, A., and Metanis, N. Chem. Sci., 8, 1922-1926 (2017)
   

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Abstract Reference & Short Personal Biography of Presenting Author

Norman Metanis was born in Maghar 1978, and earned his B.A. degree in Chemistry in 2000 (Cum Laude) from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel. After one year as a visiting student at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), La Jolla, he returned to the Technion and completed his M.A. degree in 2004 (Cum Laude). Then he moved back to TSRI where he worked with Prof. Ehud Keinan and Prof. Philip Dawson on a joint program between the Technion and TSRI for his Ph.D. studies, which he completed in 2008. Dr. Metanis joined the group of Prof. Donald Hilvert at ETH Zurich as a postdoctoral research associate.  In 2013, Dr. Metanis joined the Institute of Chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as an Assistant Professor., and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018. Dr. Metanis is the winner of the Miklós Bondanszky Award (2018), given by the European Peptide Society (EPS), he was also elected as the National Representative at the European Peptide Society (EPS) (2018), selected as outstanding teacher for "Organic Chemistry for Medical Students" (2017), received the “Thieme Chemistry Journal Awardee” (2017) and Ma’of Fellowship for Outstanding Arab Lecturer (2013).

His major research interests (http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/metanis/research.html) are bioorganic chemistry, protein science, chemical synthesis of proteins, the development of chemoselective reactions applied to peptide and protein chemistry, therapeutic peptides and proteins, protein posttranslational modifications as well as protein functions.