Research conducted by Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry professor and chair Dr. Owen McDougal and his students, Biomolecular Sciences PhD candidate Matt Turner, and chemistry MS students Leanna Marquart and Paul Phillips, was recently published in an special issue of MDPI titled “Marine Toxins Affecting Neuronal Function”.  MDPI.com is a platform for peer-reviewed, scientific open-access journals operated by MDPI, based in Basel, Switzerland.
The article is titled “Mutagenesis of α-Conotoxins for Enhancing Activity and Selectivity for Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors.”
Dr. McDougal has been researching conotoxin peptides for the past twenty five years. This article highlights advances in the field of conotoxin peptides that provide a molecular template, which can be manipulated for advanced therapeutic drug development to treat diseases involving neurotransmission like Parkinson’s Disease, Alzeheimers, Schizophrenia, chronic pain, and nicotine addition.
Also highlighted in this article’s body of work is a computational approach to therapeutic drug optimization utilizing the DockoMatic software developed by Drs. Tim Andersen and Owen McDougal at Boise State University over the past ten years. The graduate students have spent nearly three years compiling the data and organizing it in a coherent and compelling manner for publication.
Dr. McDougal explains, “This body of work is representative of the quality of student participating in graduate programs at Boise State University that have benefited from support by COBRE and INBRE, and access to the The Biomolecular Research Center.”