Welcome to the Thanh Do research group home page!

The lab is actively seeking motivated and driven students who are interested in biophysical and bioanalytical chemistry. No mass spectrometry background is required. Interested undergraduate and graduate students are invited to contact Professor Do via email about joining the lab.

My research combines ion-mobility mass spectrometry (IM-MS), mass spectrometry imaging (MSI), NMR, X-ray crystallography, and computational modeling to bring a chemical physics outlook to problems of broad chemical interest. The overarching aims of my research are twofold. The first is to develop fast and sensitive MS-based techniques and bioanalytical methods suitable for simultaneously assessing the structure, topology, composition and dynamics of exotic species in the gas phase. These species include small molecules, peptides and proteins in complex mixtures and volume-limited samples. At this point, we are interested in the ``dark'' conformational space of macrocycles. The work is a blend of experiment and theory.

The second overarching aim is to use these techniques for biological applications. A focal area is to investigate toxic mechanisms induced by amyloid oligomers through probing changes in chemical content of acute brain tissue slices (in collaboration with Prof. Rebecca Prosser in BCMB) or single neurons, or isolated single mouse islets (with Prof. Mike Karlstad at UTHSC). Amyloid oligomers have been implicated as toxic agents in debilitating diseases such as Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Please read our recent publications to know more about what we are currently working on.