UC Berkeley

Copper, iron and sodium are essential elements for life. The potent redox activity of copper and iron are essential to redox-dependent cellular processes, including respiration and biology spanning oxygen transport, nucleotide synthesis, and electron transfer. At the same time, however, mismanagement of copper and iron stores and subsequent oxidative stress and damaging events are implicated to many diseases such as Wilson’s disease and neurodegenerative disorders. The non-redox active metal, sodium, has been recognized as regulating acid-base homeostasis and participating in maintaining membrane potential and triggering the activation of diverse signal transduction pathways. Therefore, we seek to develop new methods for monitoring copper, iron, and sodium in biological and environmental samples and in turn, to apply these chemical tools to help study the roles of these essential metals in healthy and disease states. The aims of my graduate research in Prof. Chris Chang’s lab at UC Berkeley have been focused on developing new material-based binding platforms to enable monitoring of copper and iron levels in biological and environmental samples without complex and expensive instrumentation, designing novel imaging probes for copper based on protein tagging technique in living cells and in the neurons, and developing sodium fluorescent sensors based on a photoinduced electron transfer mechanism.