Bio

Christopher Jaroniec received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Kent State University in 1997 and his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow with Prof. Robert Griffin, and he was a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow with Dr. Ad Bax at the National Institutes of Health. He joined The Ohio State University as an Assistant Professor in 2006, was promoted Associate Professor in 2011 and Professor in 2014, and named Evans Scholar in 2013 and College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry in 2021. Currently, Professor Jaroniec also serves as Associate Dean for Research and Creative Inquiry in the College of Arts and Sciences and Associate Director of the OSU CCIC NMR Facility, where he directs the operations of multiple cutting-edge high-field solid-state NMR instruments. Professor Jaroniec has received multiple national and international research awards including the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, the Eli Lilly Young Investigator Award in Analytical Chemistry, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the Founders' Medal from the International Council on Magnetic Resonance in Biological Systems, the Varian Young Investigator Award in Magnetic Resonance, the ACS Akron Section Award and the ACS Physical Division Early-Career Award in Experimental Physical Chemistry, and he was elected as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Research Overview

Our research is focused on the development of multidimensional magic-angle spinning solid-state NMR techniques and their application to the analysis of molecular structure, conformational dynamics and intermolecular interactions of otherwise intractable biological macromolecules that are of fundamental importance to human health with the goal of understanding biological mechanism and function. We also employ solution-state NMR, cryo-electron microscopy and other complementary biophysical, computational, biochemical and molecular biology methods in support of our various research projects. Current research directions in the group include:

• Characterization of chromatin structure, dynamics and interactions with particular focus on the role of dynamic histone protein tail domains in mediating chromatin compaction and interactions with regulatory proteins
• Characterization of DNA base pairing in nucleosomes and other large protein-DNA complexes
• Elucidation of the structural basis of protein conformational inheritance in amyloid and prion diseases
• Development of conventional and dynamic nuclear polarization enhanced solid-state NMR methods for site-resolved measurement of structural and dynamic parameters in proteins with improved precision and accuracy
• Development of solid-state NMR methods for probing long range structure in biological macromolecules via incorporation of covalent paramagnetic tags 

Our work is currently funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, Eli Lilly and the Evans Disease Endowment Fund at Ohio State.

Dr. Jaroniec will be taking graduate students this year and welcomes inquiries about openings in his group.

Recent Publications

For a complete list of publications, click here.

B.P. Tatman, V. Sridharan, M. Uttarkabat, C.P. Jaroniec, M. Ernst, P. Rovo, P. Schanda, Bumps on the road: The way to clean relaxation dispersion magic-angle spinning NMR, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2025, 147, 29315–29326. [pubmed]

84. V. Sridharan, T. George, D.W. Conroy, Z. Shaffer, W.K. Surewicz, C.P. Jaroniec, Copper binding alters the core structure of amyloid fibrils formed by Y145Stop human prion protein, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2024, 26, 26489–26496.[pubmed]

83. C.P. Jaroniec, Structural and dynamic studies of chromatin by solid-state NMR spectroscopy, Curr. Opin. Struct. Biol. 2024, 89, 102921. [pubmed]

82. R. Muzquiz, C. Jamshidi, D.W. Conroy, C.P. Jaroniec, M.P. Foster, Insights into ligand-mediated activation of an oligomeric ring-shaped gene-regulatory protein from solution and solid-state NMR, J. Mol. Biol. 2024, 436, 168792. [pubmed]

81. W. Sun, O.O. Lebedenko, N. Gonzalez Salguero, M.D. Shannon, M. Zandian, M.G. Poirier, N.R. Skrynnikov, C.P. Jaroniec, Conformational and interaction landscape of histone H4 tails in nucleosomes probed by paramagnetic NMR spectroscopy, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2023, 145, 25478–25485. [pubmed]

L. Bhai, J.K. Thomas, D.W. Conroy, Y. Xu, H.M. Al-Hashimi, C.P. Jaroniec, Hydrogen bonding in duplex DNA probed by DNP enhanced solid-state NMR N-H bond length measurements, Front. Mol. Biosci. 2023, 10, 1286172. [pubmed]

S.T. Smrt, N. Gonzalez Salguero, J.K. Thomas, M. Zandian, M.G. Poirier, C.P. Jaroniec, Histone H3 core domain in chromatin with different DNA linker lengths studied by ¹H-detected solid-state NMR spectroscopy, Front. Mol. Biosci. 2023, 9, 1106588. [pubmed]