Tim Jackson: September 2021 Sutton Family Research Impact Award Recipient

The Department congratulates Dr. Tim Jackson on receiving the September 2021 Sutton Family Research Impact Award! Please read more about his research below. 

Controlling the Reactivity of a Metal-Hydroxo Adduct with a Hydrogen Bond

By Adedamola A. Opalade, Logan Hessefort, Victor W. Day, and Timothy A. Jackson*
Published in: Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2021, 143, 15159-15175.

Every general chemistry student learns about hydrogen bonds, which are unusually strong intermolecular interactions. While enzymes commonly used hydrogen bonds to control their structure and function, the complexity of enzymes makes it challenging to determine the importance of particular hydrogen bonds. In a recent publication in J. Am. Chem. Soc., the Jackson lab generated a pair of manganese complexes that mimic the active-site structure of several manganese enzymes. This work was performed by a graduate student (Abraham Opalade) and an undergraduate (Logan Hessefort) supported by the Chemistry Department’s NSF-REU program. One of the model complexes generated by Abraham and Logan contains a hydrogen bond, while the other does not. This difference allowed the team to determine the influence of this hydrogen bond on the reactivity of the manganese center. Using a combination of experimental and computational methods, the team showed that the hydrogen bond drastically increases the rates of oxidation reactions, pointing to an important role of hydrogen bonding in enzymes.