Chemistry Graduate Program

Faculty Advisor: Joshua Coon

Resume

Trenton Peters-Clarke’ research is focused on development of an interdisciplinary platform for efficient oligonucleotide characterization. Trenton’s project has centered on advancing electron transfer dissociation (ETD), a recent innovation in mass spectrometry. In ETD, protein fragmentation is accomplished by trapping ionized, multiply protonated proteins or other biomolecules of interest and exposing them to radical anion molecules. His main project involves establishing NETD – the
negative-mode analogue of the more popular ETD – as a robust method for analysis of modified RNA molecules and anionic protein analytes. Additionally, he is investigating common side reactions of the ETD reaction, such as intramolecular hydrogen atom migration, which causes distorted isotopic distributions within mass spectra. Elucidating these and other phenomena of the ETD reaction will allow for increased confidence in peptide identification for high-throughput analyses.