David Kastner

David Kastner

Graduate Student

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

David is a graduate student in bioengineering jointly advised in the Kulik and Tidor labs. He graduated from Brigham Young University with a B.S. in biophysics and worked in an organic chemistry lab under the supervision of Dr. Steven Castle studying non-standard amino acids. David completed separate internships with Dr. Haribabu Arthanari at Dana-Farber on NMR and protein composition, and Dr. Nico Tjandra at the NIH studying protein-peptide interactions. After completing his bachelors, David worked as a cancer biologist at the Huntsman Cancer Institute studying network motifs in small-cell lung cancer with Dr. Trudy Oliver. His current research at MIT will focus on better understanding high-valent iron enzymes. David is an NSF fellow.

Interests
  • biochemistry
  • enzyme catalysis
  • non-heme iron
Education
  • BS in Biophysics, 2019

    Brigham Young University

Publications

  1. Protein3D: Enabling analysis and extraction of metal-containing sites from the Protein Data Bank with molSimplify (2024)
  2. De novo biosynthesis of azide by a promiscuous N-nitrosylase (2024)
  3. Emergence of a Proton Exchange-Based Isomerization and Lactonization Mechanism in the Plant Coumarin Synthase COSY (2023)
  4. Mechanistic Insights Into Substrate Positioning Across Non-heme Fe(II)/Alpha-Ketoglutarate-Dependent Halogenases and Hydroxylases (2023)
  5. Active Learning Exploration of Transition Metal Complexes to Discover Method-Insensitive and Synthetically Accessible Chromophores (2023)
  6. Using Computational Chemistry to Reveal Nature's Blueprints for Single-Site Catalysis of C–H Activation (2022)
  7. Influence of the Greater Protein Environment on the Electrostatic Potential in Metalloenzyme Active Sites: The Case of Formate Dehydrogenase (2022)
  8. MOFSimplify, machine learning models with extracted stability data of three thousand metal–organic frameworks (2022)
  9. Probing the mechanism of isonitrile formation by a non-heme iron(II)-dependent oxidase/decarboxylase (2022)