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Felicia Etzkorn

Professor Emeritus
Felicia Etzkorn
fetzkorn@vt.edu

Dr. Etzkorn is thrilled to announce the publication of her new textbook, Green Chemistry: Principles and Case Studies,1 by the Royal Society of Chemistry, geared towards advanced undergraduate and first-year graduate students. The book is grounded in fundamental chemistry, structure and mechanism, investigating applications in a diverse range of contemporary case studies. View it here:  https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/ebook/978-1-78801-798-5    

Research Interests

The three-dimensional structures of proteins have an inherent beauty. We explore the structure and function of proteins by designing and synthesizing mimics of peptides, a process of sculpture on the molecular level. We use sophisticated computational chemistry to design and synthesize peptide mimics to stabilize the structural protein, collagen.2 Pin1 is an enzyme that regulates cell signaling in a wide range of disease states.5 We are making cis- and trans-locked Ser-Pro analogues to explore the regulatory function of Pin1 in mitosis and transcription.3,4    

  1. Etzkorn, F. A. Green Chemistry: Principles and Case Studies; The Royal Society of Chemistry: London, 2019.
  2. Etzkorn, F. A.; Ware, R. I.; Pester, A. M.; Troya, D. Conformational Analysis of n→π* Interactions in Collagen Triple Helix Models, J. Phys. Chem. B 2019, 123, 496-503. doi:
    doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcb.8b08384; pubs.acs.org/articlesonrequest/AOR-94tdJaEcYg3Bnyurgq8k
  3. Felicia A. Etzkorn and Song Zhao, Stereospecific Phosphorylation by the Central Mitotic Kinase Cdk1-cyclin B, ACS Chem Biol, Special Issue: New Frontiers in Kinases 2015, 10, doi: 10.1021/cb500815b
  4. Mayfield JE, Fan S,† Wei S, Zhang M, Li B, Ellington AD, Etzkorn FA, Zhang Y. Chemical tools to decipher regulation of phosphatases by proline isomerization on eukaryotic RNA polymerase II. ACS Chem Biol, 2015, 10(10), 2405-2414. doi:10.1021/acschembio.5b00296
  5. Mercedes-Camacho, A. Y.; Mullins, A. B.; Mason, M. D.; Xu, G. G.; Mahoney, B. J.; Wang, X.; Peng, J. W.; Etzkorn, F. A. Kinetic isotope effects support the twisted amide mechanism of Pin1 peptidyl-prolyl isomerase, Biochemistry 2013, 52, 7707-7713. doi: 10.1021/bi400700b
  • NIH FIRST Award, 1996
  • University Teaching Fellowship, University of Virginia, 1996
  • B.S. Southwest Missouri State University, 1981
  • Ph.D. University of California at Berkeley, 1991
  • Postdoctoral Associate, Harvard Medical School, 1991–1993

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