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Professor
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
University of Delaware
204 Drake Hall
Newark DE 19716-2522
Email: cthorpe@udel.edu
Phone: (302) 831-2689
Fax: (302) 831-6335
Website: http://www.udel.edu/chem/thorpe
Ph.D., Inorganic Biochemistry, University of Kent at Canterbury, England, 1977
B.A., Chemistry, University of Cambridge, England, 1969
Dr. Thorpe’s research comprises two areas of redox enzymology. The first involves medically-important enzymes of fatty acid degradation from exploring enzyme mechanism to the design of new inhibitors of metabolic pathways. The second area deals with the insertion of disulfide bridges into proteins during folding of secreted proteins and peptides. A new enzyme family has been discovered that appears to play an important role in the development of the extracellular matrix. The enzyme, sulfhydryl oxidase, may have applications in medicine and in the development of new materials.
Both projects exploit the synthesis of substrates, inhibitors, flavin analogs and probe molecules; steady-state and pre-steady state enzyme kinetics; enzyme purification; protein chemistry and sequencing; cloning and site directed mutagenesis; and computer modeling and crystal structure analysis.