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Daniel J. Blair, PhD
Daniel J. Blair, PhD

Daniel J. Blair, PhD

Assistant Member, St. Jude Faculty

Departments

Education

Postdoctoral Fellowship – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
PhD (Chemistry) – University of Bristol, Bristol, England
MSci (Chemistry) – University of Bristol, Bristol, England

Honors & Awards

  • 2017 Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellowship

Research Interests

  • Covalent interactions between small molecules and proteins/RNA
  • Automated synthesis and study of small organic molecules

Selected Publications

Blair DJ*, Chitti S, Trobe M, Kostyra DM, Haley HMS, Hansen RL, Ballmer SG, Woods TJ, Wang W, Mubayi V, Schmidt MJ, Pipal RW, Morehouse GF, Palazzolo Ray AME, Gray DL, Gill AL, Burke MD*. Automated iterative Csp3-C bond formation. Nature 604:92, 2022. doi:10.1038/s41586-022-04491-w

Selected media highlights:
Science Magazine “Machine builds druglike organic molecules in a snap” doi: 10.1126/science.ada1116
C&EN “Automated synthesis system expands its molecular menu” doi: 10.1021/cen-10008-scicon1
Science Magazine Blog: In the Pipeline “Synthetic change is still coming”
Chemistry World “Robot chemist snaps 3D building blocks together like Lego to make complex molecules”

Bubliauskas A#, Blair DJ#, Powell-Davies H, Kitson PJ, Burke MD*, Cronin L*. Digitizing chemical synthesis in 3D printed reactionware. Angew Chem Int Ed 61:e202116108, 2022. doi: 10.1002/anie.202116108 (#equally contributing authors)

Blair DJ, Burke MD*. Modular synthesis enables molecular ju-jitsu in the fight against antibiotic resistance. Nature 586:32. doi: 10.1038/d41586-020-02565-1. 

Lehmann JW, Crouch IT, Blair DJ, Trobe M, Wang P, Li J, Burke MD*. Axial shielding of Pd(II) complexes enables perfect stereoretention in Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling of Csp3 boronic acids. Nature Communications 10:1263, 2019. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-09249-z

Lehmann JW, Blair DJ, Burke MD*. Towards the generalized iterative synthesis of small molecules. Nature Reviews Chemistry 2:0115, 2018. doi: 10.1038/s41570-018-0115

Blair DJ, Tanini D, Bateman JM, Scott HK, Myers EL, Aggarwal VK*. Selective uni- and bidirectional homologation of diborylmethane. Chem Sci 8:2898, 2017. doi: 10.1039/c6sc05338f

Blair DJ, Fletcher CJ, Wheelhouse KM, Aggarwal VK*. Stereocontrolled synthesis of adjacent acyclic quaternary-tertiary motifs: application to a concise total synthesis of (-)-filiformin. Angew Chem Int Ed 53:5552, 2014. doi: 10.1002/anie.201400944

Pulis AP, Blair DJ, Torres E, Aggarwal VK*. Synthesis of enantioenriched tertiary boronic esters by the lithiation/borylation of secondary alkyl benzoates. J Am Chem Soc 135:16054, 2013. doi: 10.1021/ja409100y

Last update: October 2022

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