Campus
- Downtown Toronto (St. George)
Areas of Interest
My research lab is now closed, and I am no longer taking on graduate students or postdoctoral fellows. However, my interest continues in enzymes as catalysts for asymmetric synthesis, and in bioorganic chemistry and biotechnology, and I remain on several Editorial and Scientific Advisory Boards.
Following our pioneering the use of enzymes as practical catalysts for asymmetric synthesis in the mid-1970s, our research progressed into several other new frontier areas. Our latest advances exploited a new strategy for the generation of new specificities or activities of enzymes by controlled chemical modifications of their mutants created at preselected positions by site-directed mutagenesis. We adopted this combined site-directed mutagenesis-chemical modification strategy since it offers virtually unlimited possibilities for creating new structural environments at any enzyme location. The results have been dramatic, as documented in the Recent Publications link below. Most excitingly, the approach opens up a totally new therapeutic strategy for an alternative, previously unexploited, enzymatic approach to selectively target and destroy proteins involved in diseases. Subsequently, novel carbohydrate aspects of this approach have been spectacularly extended at Oxford by a former postdoctoral fellow, Professor Ben Davis https://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/people/ben-davis? https://www.rfi.ac.uk/people/professor-ben-g-davis/
Watch a personal video account of how our work on enzymes in organic synthesis developed.
For the past several years I have been working on documenting the history and antique equipment of the Department. I have completed a catalogue of a comprehensive archive of the history of the Chemistry Department, from its establishment in 1843 to the present. This Catalogue includes key historical landmarks, together with a detailed listing of teaching materials and equipment used in the Department over the past 150 years. I have assembled a significant collection of antique equipment, all of which will eventually be available to qualified researchers in the History of Science (Contact the Departmental Librarion). The earliest pieces to date are copies of the University of Toronto Honours Chemistry examinations for 1858, a John Browning Spectroscope (~1870), and a Becker's Sons (Rotterdam) balance made in ~1890. An electronic, key-word searchable, version of the catalogue is accessible from the Department of Chemistry home page menu “About Us/Our History” https://sites.chem.utoronto.ca/chemistry/jbj_archive/
A physical exhibit of a representative selection of papers and equipment has been installed in the Lash Miller building, so that students and visitors may view some of the antique equipment of the rich heritage on which our current status as one of the world's outstanding Chemistry Departments was built.
In addition, I have created a collection of videos on the pioneering inventions made by our faculty whose research has opened up new fields, solved key problems, or has changed the way chemistry is done. I have called these videos our “Departmental Firsts": see https://www.chemistry.utoronto.ca/our-history/departmental-firsts . Instead of formal presentations of such work as in papers or lectures, these videos provide anecdotal personal narratives by the inventors of our pioneering "Firsts" relating informally how their cutting-edge advancements came about. These videos provide personal and human perspectives of the insights leading to the giant advances they and their students made, and the challenges and obstacles that they had to overcome. The presentations included so far represent only the beginning, and it is hoped that more will be added in the future, especially as the Department's pioneering and frontier research continues and expands.
You might also find of interest the links on the meanings of the alchemy symbols on the outer walls of the Lash Miller building https://www.chemistry.utoronto.ca/our-history/alchemy-symbols-lash-miller-building , and on your academic family tree heritage https://www.chemistry.utoronto.ca/our-history/your-academic-family-tree