Adapting Mentoring Programs to the Liberal Arts College Environment

Recent work indicates that mentoring of both tenure-track and tenured STEM women faculty is important for their success. Surveys at Union and Skidmore Colleges have shown that faculty rising through the ranks agree that they need more information about the tenure and promotion process and that having a mentoring program is important to them. Because the development of mentoring networks is considered more beneficial than having a single mentor, the overall goal of our project is to provide faculty with a variety of mentors who can share their successes and challenges. At small institutions such as ours, drawing from the population of both colleges for mentors is advantageous. As a complement to the pre-existing mentoring programs on both campuses, we have developed a series of mentoring opportunities mainly for STEM women faculty, including speed mentoring, receptions, discussion tables, peer mentoring, and a mentoring database. STEM women have found the opportunity to exchange information on achievements and challenges, both personal and professional, to be empowering

Influence of the Hydrostatic Pressure and pH on the Asymmetric 2-Hydroxyketone Formation Catalyzed by Pseudomonas putida Benzoylformate Decarboxylase and Variants Thereof

Benzoylformate decarboxylase (BFD) from Pseudomonas putida is a thiamine diphosphate-dependent (ThDP) enzyme that catalyzes the asymmetric C--C bond formation to (S)-2-hydroxypropiophenone [(S)-HPP] starting from benzaldehyde and acetaldehyde. The enantioselectivity of BFD was shown to be a function of temperature and substrate concentration. It can additionally be changed by site-directed mutagenesis on hot spot positions in the active site. In this article, we present the effect of hydrostatic pressure up to 250 MPa on the enantioselectivity for the recombinant wtBFD as well as for the variants BFD F464I, BFD A460I, and BFD A460I-F464I. A general tendency toward lower amounts of (S)-HPP could be observed at increasing pressures. For two of these variants an increase in pressure even caused an inversion in the enantioselectivity and thus increasing enantiomeric excesses, respectively. A pressure-induced increase in enantioselectivity could therefore be observed for the first time in biocatalysis to the best of our knowledge. Furthermore, the pH is shown to be a parameter that also significantly influences the enantioselectivity of the reaction mentioned above