UBC Okanagan fourth-year chemistry student Shaqil Rahemtulla has done what is usually reserved for graduate students and professors: published research in a scientific journal.
As a 2015 Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Award recipient, Rahemtulla has been working under the supervision of Associate Professor and Chemistry Department Head Gino DiLabio on the influence of sodium cations on reactions between oxygen-centered radicals and amino acid models.
Along with graduate student Jeffrey van Santen, Rahemtulla made significant contributions to the paper entitled, A computational and experimental re-examination of the reaction of the benzyloxyl radical with DMSO, which has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Computational and Theoretical Chemistry’s special issue on “Antioxidants vs. Oxidative Stress: Insights from Computation”.
In the paper, Rahemtulla demonstrates that oxygen-centered radicals that are often used in studies of oxidative stress unexpectedly acts as an antioxidant rather than a pro-oxidant. The findings will change how the susceptibility of molecules to damage by oxygen-centered radicals is studied in vitro.
“This publication means the world to me, because I am finally a part of the exciting and ongoing processes of scientific discovery,” says Rahemtulla. “It’s really cool that the work our group has done here is completely unique and our findings have an influence on the scientific community.”
More at the source: University of British Columbia
Ismailimail 