Elizabethtown College A.C. Baugher Professor of Chemistry, Dr. James A. MacKay recently collaborated with four Etown School of Sciences alumni to publish key research on ribonucleic acid (RNA) recognition, which involves ongoing work completed across several Summer Creative Arts and Research (SCARP) projects on campus.
The paper, which was published in “Chemistry: A European Journal,” was co-authored by MacKay, Etown alumni John Talbott ’22, Brandon Tessier ’21, Emily Harding ’23, and Kyle Hess ’23, along with Elizabethtown College Teaching & Research Postdoctoral Associate in Chemistry, Dr. Grant Walby. The project is part of a multi-year, multi-institutional collaboration between MacKay, Eriks Rozners, Professor of Chemistry at Binghamton University, and Martins Katkevics from the Latvian Institute for Organic Synthesis.
“What I really love about this project is that I can engage undergraduate students in cutting-edge research and train them in synthetic organic chemistry,” MacKay said. “All the students poured countless hours of their time into this work and are primed to be leaders of their generation.”
The goal of the project is to learn more about RNA, a key biomolecule that is relevant to the understanding of genetics and disease, and to ultimately be able to modulate its function.
MacKay plans to continue his research and collaboration with students.
“There are still many unanswered questions and unsolved problems which, with the right level of support, will yield many more related studies and exciting outcomes in the future,” MacKay said. “Given the growing importance of RNA in biology and biotechnology, the work has far-reaching applications.”
