Chemistry and Biochemistry

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Nov 26: Thanksgiving Day; campus closed
Nov 27: Thanksgiving Break; campus closed

Announcements

Placement exam requirement for CHEM 200/202, General Chemistry I.
Congratulations to Chemistry Profs. Tom Huxford and Carl Carrano, both with papers recently accepted by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, one of the three most highly cited multidisciplinary science journals in the world.
Congratulations again to Chemistry Chair Carl Carrano, for a recent International Collaboration in Chemistry (ICC) grant for studies to be conducted jointly at SDSU and in Luebeck, Germany.
SDSU Chem & Biochem Ranks 19th in the Nation in Number of M.S. Chemistry Degrees Awarded. The complete rankings are available from the American Chemical Society.

Carl J. Carrano

Professor and Chair
Bioinorganic Chemistry

Office: GMCS-209
Office Phone: (619)594-5929
e-mail: carrano at sciences.sdsu.edu

Research Interests

I have published extensively in the field of bioinorganic chemistry and have authored over 130 research publications. In addition, I am the North American Editor for the International Journal BioMetals. My group generally contains a mix of undergraduates, graduate students, as well as postdocs. Indeed, I consider the training of graduate students and postdocs for careers in academic teaching/research institutions to be an important duty. My students have been most successful in this regard with many now holding such positions. I also bring my extensive international experience, having spent (in total) several years in Europe working with my many foreign collaborators, which presents possibilities for my students to do work overseas if they wish.

Currently, I have funding from both the NSF and the Dreyfus Foundation and therefore am actively recruiting students to work in my laboratory. My research interests are wide ranging. In bioinorganic chemistry, these extend from models for zinc, molybdenum and non-heme iron metalloprotein active sites, to design of metal complexes as artificial restriction enzymes for molecular biology to the mechanisms of iron transport and storage in microorganisms to the design and synthesis of new metallodrugs to the study of isotopic fractionation of iron in microorganisms. A recent area of interest is in marine science and the relationship between harmful algal blooms (the so called red tides) and iron and boron metabolism in phytoplankton and bacteria symbiotic with them. This is a collaborative project between us and workers at UC Santa Barbara and at the Scottish Association for Marine Science. Finally, I am interested in materials science and the rational synthesis of solid state materials using a building block approach.

These projects expose students to a wide range of modern research techniques including X-ray crystallography, NMR, computational chemistry, natural-products isolation, HPLC, ESI-MS, ICP-MS, molecular biology, electron microscopy, etc. I bring particular strengths in X-ray crystallography and am in charge of our new CCD based diffractometer. My former students, previous postdocs, and I have solved over 500 structures, and there will be ample opportunity for any interested students to learn this important technique. This goes for both the graduate students and the undergraduates. In fact, I had one undergraduate student who solved more than 20 structures and had 13 papers with me when he finished!

I hope this brief outline of my background and interests is helpful. I look forward to hearing from you if you are interested.

Selected Publications

Amin, S. A.; Kupper, F. C.; Green, D. H.; Harris, W. R.; Carrano, C. J. Boron Binding by a Siderophore Isolated from Marine Bacteria Associated with the Toxic Dinoflagellate Gymnodinium catenatum. J. Am. Chem. Soc. (2007), 129(3), 478-479.
Santillan, G. A.; Carrano, C. J. Synthesis and Characterization of Copper(II) Complexes of Nonfacially Coordinating Heteroscorpionate Ligands (4-Carboxyphenyl)bis(3,5-dimethylpyrazolyl)methane and (3-Carboxyphenyl)bis(3,5-dimethylpyrazolyl)methane. Inorganic Chemistry (2007), 46(5), 1751-1759.
Kuepper, Frithjof C.; Carrano, Carl J.; Kuhn, Jens-Uwe; Butler, Alison. Photoreactivity of Iron(III)-Aerobactin: Photoproduct Structure and Iron(III) Coordination. Inorganic Chemistry (2006), 45(15), 6028-6033.
Hoffman, Justin T.; Carrano, Carl J. S versus O alkylation and coordination in zinc complexes containing the bulky heteroscorpionate alkoxy ligand bis(3,5-dimethylpyrazol-2-yl)diphenylmethanol. Inorganica Chimica Acta (2006), 359(4), 1248-1254.
Smith, Jennifer N.; Hoffman, Justin T.; Shirin, Zahida; Carrano, Carl J. H-Bonding Interactions and Control of Thiolate Nucleophilicity and Specificity in Model Complexes of Zinc Metalloproteins. Inorganic Chemistry (2005), 44(6), 2012-2017.
Hoffman, Justin T.; Einwaechter, Simon; Chohan, Balwant S.; Basu, Partha; Carrano, Carl J. Isomerization and oxygen atom transfer reactivity in oxo-Mo complexes of relevance to molybdoenzymes. [Erratum to document cited in CA142:088703]. Inorganic Chemistry (2005), 44(1), 158.