James A. McCloskey

Research Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and
Professor of Biochemistry
phone: 801.581.5581
fax: 801.581.7457
email: james.mccloskey@utah.edu

Education

• Trinity University, B.S. (Chemistry), 1957
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ph.D. (Chemistry), 1963
• NIH Postdoctoral Fellow, CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette, France, 1963-64

Positions Held

• Chemist, United States Army Chemical Corps, U.S. Army Biological Laboratories, Fort Detrick, Maryland, 1959-61
• Postdoctoral Fellow (National Institutes of Health), Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles (Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique), Gif-sur-Yvette, France, 1963-64
• Institute for Lipid Research and Department of Biochemistry, Baylor College of Medicine
• Assistant Professor of Chemistry, 1964-67
• Associate Professor of Chemistry, 1967-71
• Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Biochemistry, 1971-74
• Visiting Professor, Tokyo University, Tokyo, Japan, September 1971-March 1972
• Visiting Professor, Departments of Chemistry and Biopharmaceutical Sciences, University of Utah, 1972
• Visiting Investigator, National Cancer Center Research Institute, Tokyo, 1971-1992
• Adjunct Professor of Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, University of Utah, 1976-present
• Professor of Biochemistry, Department of Biochemistry, University of Utah, 1976-present
• Professor of Biomedical Chemistry, Department of Medicinal Chemistry, University of Utah, 1974-2003
• Research Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, 2003-present

Fellowships and Awards

• Postdoctoral Fellow (National Institutes of Health), Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles (Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique), Gif-sur-Yvette, France, 1963-64
• Special Fellow (National Institutes of Health), University of Utah, 1972
• Fellow, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, 1972
• Honorary Professor, Kurume University, Kurume, Japan, 1979
• University of Utah Distinguished Research Award, 1989
• Award for Distinguished Contribution in Mass Spectrometry (American Society for Mass Spectrometry), 2005

Professional Activities

• American Society for Mass Spectrometry:
• President, 1978-80
• Secretary, 1974-76
• Vice President for Programs, 1976-78
• Board of Directors, 1974-82
• Medicinal Chemistry B Study Section, National Institutes of Health, 1974-78
• Director, Interdepartmental Biological Chemistry Program, 1993-95
• Director, University of Utah Mass Spectrometry Facility, 1975-2003

Advisory Boards:
• NIH Regional Mass Spectrometry Resource, Battelle Columbus Laboratories, 1974-77
• NIH Bioorganic, Biomedical Mass Spectrometry Resource, University of California, San Francisco, 1981-1990; Chair, 1983-1990
• NSF Mass Spectrometry Resource, University of Nebraska, 1979-83
• NIH Regional Mass Spectrometry Resource, Washington University School of Medicine, 1981-1990

Plenary Lectures:
• 7th International Conference on Mass Spectrometry, Florence, 1976
• Japanese Society for Medical Mass Spectrometry, Kurume, 1979
• British Mass Spectrometry Society, Canterbury, 1980
• 4th International Round Table on Nucleosides and Nucleotides, Antwerp, 1981
• International Symposium on Mass Spectrometry in the Health and Life Sciences, San Francisco, 1984
• New Zealand Biochemical Society, New Zealand Institute of Chemistry, Australian-New Zealand Mass Spectrometry Society (joint meeting), Dunedin, 1986
• Japanese Society for Biomedical Mass Spectrometry, Tokyo, 1988
• American Society for Mass Spectrometry, Nashville, 1991
• Japanese Society for Biological Mass Spectrometry, Fukuoka, 1991
• International Conference on Biological Mass Spectrometry, Kyoto, 1992
• American Society for Mass Spectrometry, San Antonio, 2005

Special Lectures:
• Barnett Lectures, Northeastern University, 1984
• Watkins Lectures, Wichita State University, 1985
• 11th International Mass Spectrometry Conference, Bordeaux, 1988
• 12th International Mass Spectrometry Conference, Amsterdam, 1991

Research Interests

The interests of my research group span two interrelated areas: the mass spectrometry of nucleic acids, and its use in structural studies; and the discovery, structure determination and function of posttranscriptionally modified nucleosides in RNA. There are presently known nearly 100 different modified nucleosides in RNA. They play a diverse but poorly understood variety of functional roles, including influence on secondary and tertiary structure and stabilization, and enhancement of fidelity of intermolecular interactions in protein synthesis. We seek a clearer understanding of modification - function relationships through knowledge of the structures and sequence locations of these modified species, from a phylogenetically diverse source of organisms. Recent developments in mass spectrometry methodology offer significantly new approaches to structural studies in this field.

Current Research Topics:
• the chemistry of collision-induced dissociation of oligonucleotides
• strategies for mapping of modification sites in large RNAs by LC/ESI-MS/MS
• modification in the small subunit rRNAs of the archaeal hyperthermophiles Sulfolobus solfataricus and Pyrococcus furiosus and their roles in structural stabilization
• mapping of posttranscriptional modifications in ribosomal RNA from bacterial thermophiles and phylogenetic comparison with rRNA's from Archaea and Eucarya