- DNA replication, repair and transcription
- Drug discovery
- Enzymology
- Structural biology
- Thermodynamics and kinetics of biological processes
Oleg Tsodikov, PhD
Professor
By combining structural biology, biophysical chemistry and computation, Dr. Tsodikov’s group is working on understanding biological mechanisms involved in bacterial infection and cancer. The areas of interest are drug resistance and virulence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and other bacterial pathogens, mechanisms of oncogenic transcription factors, as well as natural product biosynthesis and medical applications of natural products. The basic scientific inquiry is fueling a target-based drug discovery effort in finding, characterizing and developing novel inhibitors of these processes.
Oleg Tsodikov graduated summa cum laude from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology with a M. S. in 1994 and joined the Ph.D. program in biophysics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work in Professor Tom Record’s laboratory was focused on using biophysical chemistry and computational methods to study fundamental protein-DNA interactions involved in prokaryotic transcription initiation.
From Wisconsin, Dr. Tsodikov moved to Harvard Medical School, where he was a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Tom Ellenberger’s group. At Harvard, he carried out structural and biochemical studies of human nucleotide excision repair proteins. Before joining the University of Kentucky, Dr. Tsodikov was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Michigan.
Interests
Education & Appointments
Education:
- Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Medical School
- Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison
- M.S. Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology
- B.S. Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology
Position:
- Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences
We wish to remember and honor those who inhabited this Commonwealth before the arrival of the Europeans. Briefly occupying these lands were the Osage, Wyndott tribe, and Miami peoples. The Adena and Hopewell peoples, who are recognized by the naming of the time period in which they resided here, were here more permanently. Some of their mounds remain in the Lexington area, including at UK’s Adena Park.
In more recent years, the Cherokee occupied southeast Kentucky, the Yuchi southwest Kentucky, the Chickasaw extreme western Kentucky and the Shawnee central Kentucky including what is now the city of Lexington. The Shawnee left when colonization pushed through the Appalachian Mountains. Lower Shawnee Town ceremonial grounds are still visible in Greenup County.
We honor the first inhabitants who were here, respect their culture, and acknowledge the presence of their descendants who are here today in all walks of life including fellow pharmacists and healthcare professionals.