Education

BS

Chemistry
North Carolina State University

PhD

Biochemistry
Duke University

Expertise

Computational Molecular Modeling and Design

My early work involved the development of a three-dimensional model for the active site of Pneumocystis carinii dihydrofolate reductase.  This model provided an early detailed target for the design of potential agents for the treatment of pneumocystis carinii pneumonia.

We have also applied the protein-based drug design strategy to studying the interaction between DNA and small molecule ligands.  This approach holds the potential to expand the exploitation of DNA sequences as drug design targets.

My laboratory also collaborated in the design of chircal-selective mixed micelles. These structures possess the ability to discriminate between ‘R’ and ‘S’ enantiomers of small molecules. This is an important component of the synthetic scheme during the drug development process.

Genome Informatics/Data Science with an emphasis on minority health and health disparities

Additionally, our work investigating allele frequencies in different populations have indicated substantial population differentiation in allele frequencies of obesity-associated SNPs. These findings may help elucidate the genetic basis that contribute to population disparities in obesity prevalence.

Academics

Molecules and Cells

My teaching effort in this course is focused on biochemistry for medical students.

Protein Structure and Function

This course explores 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional structures of proteins and how these structures contribute to and/or determine the biological roles of these macromolecules.

Biochemistry Laboratory

My teaching effort in this course is focused on the practical methods and procedures associated with studying the 3-dimensional rendering of macromolecular structures and the simulation of the solution behavior of these structures.

Research

Specialty

Structural Biology/Informatics/Data Science with an emphasis on minority health and health disparities

Funding

Howard University RCMI Program Grant

The major goal of this grant is to provide research infrastructure at Howard University for the support of research in the general areas of minority health and health disparities by enhancing collaborative translational projects, strengthening core facilities and improving faculty development. The RCMI Program also interacts with the national RCMI Coordinating Center which is a consortium of biomedical, behavioral and clinical researchers from 21 RCMI-supported institutions working with healthcare providers and the community to address health disparities through collaboration to increase research on diseases related to underrepresented minorities and expand faculty outreach and competitiveness.

Group Information

My research interests include utilization of data science principles to probe health data to better understand the chronic disease burden among different ethnic groups and investigations on the impact of gene sequence variation data on disease expression among different ethnic groups.  Additional interests include investigating the rules of molecular recognition and interactions using molecular dynamics simulation to correlate conformational changes with time-dependent changes in atom-atom contacts between interacting species and with any associated changes in time-dependent interaction energies. This approach is used to study interaction mechanisms of small molecules with both proteins and DNA and has important implications for design of therapeutic agents. Also, of interest is the utilization of molecular dynamics and time-dependent interaction energy calculations to decode the nucleotide sequence dependency on ligand recognition by DNA. Additional interests include the design of proteins with increased thermal stability for application to industrial, environmental and diagnostic arenas.