Vincent L. Pecoraro
He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Pecoraro was born in Freeport, NY in August 1956; shortly after, his family relocated to California where he spent the majority of his childhood.
[1] On completing high school, he continued his education at the University of California, Los Angeles graduating with his B.S.
Vincent L. Pecoraro and Myoung Soo Lah reported the first metallacrown in 1989 and these compounds have since grown into their own field of research with numerous new applications.
[3] As such, specific ions can be selectively trapped in the center by tuning the structure of the metallacrown and also, by changing the environment, such as the solvent.
[4] Due to these unique properties and the inherent greenness associated with metallacrown synthesis (typically high yield, one step, benign solvent), this is still an active research topic for the Pecoraro group and many other scientists around the world.
[5] These gadolinium chelates present many health hazards and can even lead to death, though it is an uncommon occurrence and typically is only seen in patients with kidney issues.
[1] Other potential uses of metallacrowns in the body include hydrolyzing phosphate diesters, a key linkage component in RNA and DNA.
[8] Currently, the group is continuing to work on fully understanding this system with the ultimate goal of applying it to memory storage devices.
These enzymes have a wide variety of critical roles in the body including acting as an anti-oxidant (superoxide dismutase)[10] and protecting the cell from oxidation damage (catalase).
[12] The Pecoraro group approaches these manganese based compounds by first creating model systems and studying them.
One of these enzyme types, nitrogenases, are responsible for converting nitrogen gas to ammonia and can then be accessed by plants, which is critical to their development.
[16] The other type, haloperoxidases, takes bromine from seawater along with hydrogen peroxide and converts them into organobromine compounds.
Not only did their system efficiently catalyze the reaction, but they were also able to collect valuable kinetic data and come up with a proposed catalytic cycle as seen below.
Arsenic was found to bind to peptides via primarily a trigonal-pyramidal or tetrahedral shape in a manner that is both kinetically and thermodynamically favorable.
In order to address this issue, the Pecoraro group has undertaken de novo or "from scratch" protein design.
This methodology allows for a unique amino acid sequence, binding site of the metal, and finally, folding of the protein or respective metallopeptide.
