Biocatalysis
Data Science
Synthesis
Biology
Lab Lore
100

The need to perform biocatalytic growth and reactions free of oxygen

What is anaerobic?

100

This type of machine learning model predicts a continuous numerical value rather than assigning an observation to a category.

What is a regression model?

100

This synthetic method uses physical force, often through ball milling, to drive chemical reactions with little or no solvent.

What is mechanochemistry?

100

A typical PCR-based site-directed mutagenesis kit relies on three types of enzymes to amplify the mutant plasmid, seal DNA nicks, and remove the parental template. Name the three enzyme types.

What are a DNA polymerase, DNA ligase, and a restriction enzyme (DpnI)?

100

The Lab's obligatory beer spot

What is Three Heads?

200

This porphyrin-based cofactor contains an iron center capable of accessing multiple oxidation states during enzymatic catalysis.

What is heme?

200

This process converts a chemical structure into a numerical representation, such as molecular descriptors or fingerprints, that can be used by a machine-learning algorithm.  

What is vectorization?

200

The two most prolific synthetic chemists with last names shared with countries

Who is Denmark and Ireland?

200

This enzyme-kinetic parameter is commonly used to compare how efficiently an enzyme processes different substrates.

What is kcat/Km (catalytic efficiency)?

200

AEP's two biggest pet peeves in scientific communication

What is the uneccessary use of the word "different" and possessive pronouns for colleagues?

300

Often referred to as the mother of directed evolution and father of biocatalysis

Who is Frances Arnold and Nick Turner

300

A tenured professor at the University of Rochester with a strong presence in cheminformatics & machine learning

Who is Andrew White?

300

An aldehyde, CBr₄/PPh₃, and two equivalents of n-BuLi are the classic ingredients for this named transformation.

What is the Corey-Fuchs reaction?

300

Leader in the field of glycobiology and slime. 

Hint: It's Rain(es)ing Husbands (?)

Who is Laura Kiessling?

300

The first trainee to set up a reaction in the Paton Lab

Who is Abby Mullen?

400

The catalytic triad of aKG enzymes

What is 2 histidines and a carboxylate?

400

This bioinformatics algorithm searches a database for sequences that share statistically significant local similarity with a query sequence.

What is BLAST?

400

Completed by Robert Burns Woodward in 1954, the synthesis of this alkaloid is widely considered a landmark achievement in the history of total synthesis.

What is strychnine?

400

In protein engineering, this strategy creates a library by introducing mutations throughout a gene without specifying their positions beforehand, commonly using an intentionally low-fidelity PCR reaction.

What is error-prone PCR (random mutagenesis)?

400

You have many Aunts and Uncles as professors around the world. Name at least two Universities at which they are employed. 

What is KU, Purdue, University of Adelaide, and Grinnell University?

500

Which of these transition metals is not known to serve as a native enzymatic cofactor: manganese, cobalt, nickel, molybdenum, vanadium, or chromium?

What is chromium?

500

Models such as ESM treat amino acid sequences like a natural language to generate numerical representations that can be used to predict enzyme function. These models are collectively known by this name.

What are Protein Language Models?
500

This asymmetric aldol reaction uses a chiral oxazolidinone auxiliary to control the stereochemistry of C–C bond formation through a highly organized boron enolate transition state.

What is the Evans aldol reaction?

500

Changes in α-helical and β-sheet content during protein folding can be monitored by this spectroscopic technique, typically by measuring signals in the far-UV region from ~190–250 nm.

What is circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy?

500

A Postdoc from this lab caused irrepairable damage to our shaking incubator

Who is Hongbo Liu?

M
e
n
u