Deborah Perlstein

Deborah Perlstein is an Associate Professor at Boston University, with research spanning the intersection of chemistry and biology. Her work focuses on bioinorganic chemistry, particularly the biophysical and biochemical mechanisms of iron-sulfur cluster-containing proteins and bacterial cell division. She employs techniques such as enzymology, microscopy, and molecular biology to dissect these systems.

• Education:
  • B.S. in Biological Chemistry, Tulane University (1998)
  • Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2005)
  • Postdoctoral Fellowship in Microbiology and Chemical Biology, Harvard Medical School (2010)

Research Interests delve into:

• Iron-Sulfur Proteins: Ancient cofactors enabling non-standard amino acid chemistries. Key goals include elucidating enzymatic mechanisms and in vivo assembly pathways for these clusters.
• Bacterial Cell Division: Targeting cytoskeletal proteins like MreB and FtsZ to develop antibiotics against drug-resistant pathogens. Studies include protein dynamics regulation in vitro and in vivo.

Publications highlight her contributions to understanding iron-sulfur cluster maturation, ATPase roles, and bacterial growth mechanisms. Recent work integrates machine learning for experimental biochemists and structural studies of scaffold proteins like Met18.

Students include undergraduates and summer researchers such as Darlene S. Douglas (MIT, B.S. 2001) and Mia Lassier (Harvard Summer Program, 2009).

Contact: Email dperl@bu.edu | Phone 617.358.6180