CHARLES H. CLAPP

Department of Chemistry 216 Rooke Chemistry Building Bucknell University Lewisburg, PA 17837 Telephone: (570) 577-3137 Fax: 570-577-1739 E-mail: cclapp@bucknell.edu

• Professor of Chemistry
  Participating faculty member in the Cell Biology / Biochemistry program
• A.B., Bowdoin College
• Ph.D., Harvard University
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Brandeis University
• Biochemistry. Mechanisms of enzymatic reactions;
  synthesis and mechanistic characterization of enzyme inhibitors.

Courses taught at Bucknell:

• Biochemistry I
• Biochemistry II
• Biochemical Methods
• Organic Chemistry Lab
• General Chemistry
• Seminar on “Biochemistry of Therapeutic Drugs”
• Seminar on “Mechanisms of Pharmaceutically Interesting Enzymes”
• Seminar on “Biotechnology”
• Chemistry, Health, and Disease
• Undergraduate and Graduate Research

Research

Most of the work in my lab concerns soybean lipoxygenase, a non-heme iron protein that catalyzes the oxygenation of linoleic acid (1) to 13-hydroperoxy-9,11-octadecadienoic acid (2).

The goals of this work are to understand the catalytic mechanism of this enzyme and to discover new inhibitors of the enzyme. It is hoped that the insight derived from this work will contribute to the design inhibitors of human lipoxygenases that are thought to be involved in inflammation, asthma, and possibly atherosclerosis. Studying the soybean enzyme has the advantage that the three-dimensional structure has been determined by X-ray diffraction.

Student projects involve (1) design, synthesis and testing of new inhibitors, (2) synthesis of novel substrates of the enzyme, (3) characterization of the products from novel lipoxygenase substrates, (4) kinetic studies using both spectroscopic and HPLC methods, and (5) studies on the use of site-directed mutagenesis to test hypotheses about substrate binding and catalytic mechanism.

Recent Publications:

• “Cationic substrates of soybean lipoxygenase-1,” Chohany; L. E.; Bishop, K. A.; Camic, H.; Sup, S. J.; Findeis, P. M.; Clapp, C. H. Bioorganic Chemistry, 2011; 39, 94-100.
• “Oxygenation of Monounsaturated Fatty Acids by Soybean Lipoxygenase-1: Evidence for Transient Hydroperoxide Formation ” Clapp, C. H.; Strulson, M.; Rodriguez, P. C.; Lo, R.; Novak, M. J. Biochemistry, 2006; 45, 15884-15892.
• “Irreversible Inactivation of Soybean Lipoxygenase-1 by Hydrophobic Thiols,” Clapp, C. H.; Grandizio, A. M.; Yang, Y.; Kagey, M.; Turner, D.; Bicker, A; Muskardin, D. Biochemistry, 2002, 41, 11504-11511.
• “Soybean Lipoxygenase-Mediated Oxygenation of Monounsaturated Fatty Acids to Enones,” Clapp, C. H.; Senchak, S.; Stover, T. J.; Potter, T. C.; Findeis, P. M.; Novak, M. J. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2001, 123, 747-748.
• “The Action of Soybean Lipoxygenase-1 on 12-Iodo-cis-9-octadecenoic Acid: The Importance of C(11)-H Bond Breaking,” Clapp, C. H.; McKown, J.; Xu, H.; Grandizio, A. M.; Yang, G.; Fayer, J. Biochemistry, 2000, 39, 2603-2611.

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Updated: 3/3/13
Creator: J. Clapp