The Visiting Proffessor
Anne M. Baranger
Professor of Organic
Chemistry(860)-685-2739
abaranger@wesleyan.edu
Life and Times
Dr. Baranger grew up in Pittsburg, PA and attended MIT as an
undergraduate. At MIT, she worked with Linda Jen-Jacobson, studying the
mechanism of summers EcoRI endonuclease activity using UV irradiation
and chemical methods, and Steve Buchwald, studying
the regiochemisty of alkyne insertion into a zirconocene-imine complex.
For graduate work, Dr. Baranger went to the University of California,
Berkley, where
she earned her Ph. D. doing research with Robert Bergman, an
organometallic chemist, studying a catalytic hydroamination of alkynes
and the reactivity of a heterobimetallic Zr-Ir complex. After earning
her Ph. D., Dr. Baranger pursued Post Doc work with Alanna Schepartz at
Yale University studying DNA-protein interactions. Her Post Doctoral
work focused on the ability of the HTLVI viral protein Tax to alter the
binding of bZIP transcription factors to DNA. Dr. Baranger is currently
a faculty member of Department of Chemistry at Wesleyan University and
currently teaches Organic Chemistry, Organic Laboratory, Physical
Organic Chemistry, Chemical Biology, Advanced Laboratory, and a
Freshman seminar course called Drugs and Disease. Dr. Baranger also is
married and has an 11-month
old daughter.
Focus of Current Research
Dr. Baranger is currently involved in many research projects with
undergraduate students attempting to learn the fundamental interactions
responsible for protein-RNA recognition. She hopes the results may
contribute to the design of peptides and small molecules that can bind
RNA. The development of such molecules will help further the
understanding of fundamental biology as well as contribute to the
development of
new drugs (a reverse transcriptase blocker for instance). This is but a
small outline of Dr. Baranger's research, but she provides more
specific information at her website www.wesleyan.edu/chem/faculty/baranger.
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