Shawn Campagna

Assistant Professor
Organic Chemistry

Chemical Biology, Metallo-peptide Catalysis, Metabolomics

B.S., North Carolina State University (2000)
Ph.D., Princeton University (2006)

 

Research

Research in my group will use organic synthesis, combinatorial methods, and analytical techniques, such as tandem liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance, to answer biologically relevant questions at the molecular level. We will also actively seek collaborations with entities such as the UT Joint Institute for Biological Sciences (JIBS) and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Specifically, we will focus our research in three main areas.

• Combinatorial Development of Enzyme Mimics
  Nature utilizes amino acid based ligands, i.e. proteins, in conjunction with reactive metal centers to construct complex molecular structures from simple staring materials with great efficiency. Taking cues from natural systems, we will design a library of metallo-peptides from which we can select members capable of performing complexity generating reactions. Focus will be on the construction of cyclic peptide ligands, with a constrained geometry, capable of binding transition metals and catalyzing reactions. Special emphasis will be placed on important reactions such as C-H bond activation and olefin cross-metathesis with the overall goal of identifying catalysts that can synthesize complex natural products in a very few steps.


• Discovery Metabolite Profiling
  Although many tools have been developed to analyze the genome and proteome of organisms, methods to characterize the metabolome are still in their infancy. The metabolome, or the total small molecule complement of a cell, is of interest to chemists since a molecular understanding of natural processes will give insight into new methods to control the behavior of biological systems as well as provide novel biologically active structures. Amazingly, even in simple organisms such as Escherichia coli, approximately half of the enzymes and small molecules in the cell remain uncharacterized. Our lab will contribute to efforts to characterize the metabolome of several organisms by identifying novel enzymatic functions and synthesizing metabolites of high biological importance.


• Inter-kingdom Bacterial Signaling
  Until the last few decades, most believed that bacteria lived as single celled organisms which only sought to optimize their own chance of reproduction. Evidence is mounting that the selfish gene hypothesis is incorrect, and that in fact these organisms behave in concert to construct multi-species communities that behave as pseudo-multicellular organisms. Recent work has shown that many pathogenic bacteria are able to signal their prospective host and compromise the immune response as a prelude to infection. Disruption of these signaling cascades will provide a novel method to fight infectious disease. Our lab will seek to identify novel signaling molecules, understand their biological function, and design analogues in an attempt to develop new therapeutics.

Representative publications

Semmelhack, M. F.; Campagna, S. R.; Federle, M. J.; Bassler, B. L. "An expeditious synthesis of DPD and boron binding studies," Org. Lett., 2005, 7(4), 569-572.

Miller, S. T.; Xavier, K. B,; Campagna, S. R.; Taga, M. E.; Semmelhack, M. F.; Bassler, B. L.; Hughson, F. M. "Salmonella typhimurium recognizes a chemically distinct form of the bacterial quorum-sensing signal Al-2," Mol. Cell, 2004, 15(5), 677-687.

Rickard, A. H.; Palmer, R. J.; Blehert, D. S.; Campagna, S. R.; Semmelhack, M. F.; Egland, P. G.; Bassler, B. L.; Kolenbrander, P. E. "Autoinducer-2: a concentration-dependent signal for mutualistic bacterial biofilm growth," Mol. Micro., 2006, 60(6), 1446-1456.

Campagna, S. R.; Rabinowitz, J. D. "Metabolome Quantitation Mass Spectrometry: Sensitive measurement of many core metabolites in parallel." G.I.T. Lab. Rev., in press January, 2007

Biographical sketch

Dr. Campagna completed his B.S. in Chemistry from North Carolina State University in 2000 and conducted research with Prof. Jonathan S. Lindsey on the chemical synthesis of bacterial chromosomes. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2006, after working with Prof. Martin F. Semmelhack on a joint project with Profs. Bonnie L. Bassler and Frederick M. Hughson to characterize the chemical properties of an inter-species bacterial signaling molecule, autoinducer-2. Currently Dr. Campagna is a post-doctoral fellow with Prof. Joshua D. Rabinowitz at the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University where he is developing mass spectrometric methods for the identification of natural products from whole cell extracts. He will be joining the Chemistry Department at UT Knoxville in August 2007.

Shawn Campagna

609 Buehler Hall
Knoxville, TN 37996-1600
Phone: (865) 974-7337
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