Squire J. Booker

Squire Booker is interested in how enzymes use metals, metal clusters, and organic cofactors to catalyze kinetically challenging reactions. He is well known for his work on radical S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) enzymes, which use iron-sulfur clusters and SAM to generate highly reactive molecules that initiate an array of chemical reactions. He has elucidated the mechanisms behind these reactions, including many involved in the biosynthesis of natural products with antibacterial or anticancer properties. He has also unraveled the details of the enzymatic reaction that attaches a methyl group to bacterial ribosomal RNA, a modification that makes microbes resistant to antibiotics. Booker's team is now working to generate inhibitors of this reaction.