Eric T. Kool | |
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File:Eric T. Kool.jpg Stanford University | |
Born | |
Known for | DNA base mimics called "nonpolar nucleoside isosteres" Watson and Crick’s hydrogen bonds in DNA are not needed for replication of base pairs, especially significant in biotechnology and synthetic biology "rolling circle amplification" (RCA) and "rolling circle transcription" (RCT) and xDNA |
Honors | Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship Young Investigator Award of the Office of Naval Research Army Research Office Young Investigator Award Beckman Young Investigator Award Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award American Chemical Society’s Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award Pfizer Award American Chemical Society Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Organic Chemistry Chemical Biology Biophysics |
Institutions | Stanford University |
The research by Eric T. Kool is in synthetic biology with applications in biotechnology and medicine, such as the development of synthetic pharmaceuticals. His work has included studies that focus upon bases in DNA and RNA other than A, C, G, T, and U. For example, xDNA. These new bases do not utilize the standard Watson-Crick bonds (and if extended, do not use Hoogstein bonds. By increasing the alphabet of bases possible in DNA and RNA, it may be possible to increase the possible genetic code with new synthetic codons which can also code for new amino acids to create a library of synthetic proteins, thus impacting proteomics.