She joined the lab of Satoru Masamune, working to develop and apply new techniques to synthesize a class of antibiotic chemicals known as ansamycin.
[1] She did additional postdoctoral research at Brandeis University in the laboratory of Robert Abeles, where she received training in chemical biology designing, synthesizing, and evaluating peptide-based protease inhibitors.
While at Caltech, she was influenced by the research of Dennis Dougherty, who was applying unnatural amino acid mutagenesis to understand interactions of ligand-gated membrane channels and receptors.
[3][4] In addition to studying glycosylation, Imperiali has also led investigations into how to design, develop, and apply chemical approaches to understand and manipulate biochemical processes for a variety of applications.
[5] This method can be applied to screen for protein kinase inhibitors and monitor their activities in cells and tissues, enabling tracking of signaling pathways and providing a potential diagnostic tool for diseases like cancers that may result from disrupted kinase-mediated regulation.