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

Representative recent publications (the complete publication list is available on our research group's web page):

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. https://dx.doi.org/10.1039/D4CP03593C

C.P. Jaroniec, Structural and dynamic studies of chromatin by solid-state NMR spectroscopy, Curr. Opin. Struct. Biol. 2024, 89, 102921. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbi.2024.102921

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. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmb.2024.168792

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. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmolb.2023.1286172

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. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.3c10340

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. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmolb.2022.1106588

Q. Li, C.P. Jaroniec, W.K. Surewicz, Cryo-EM structure of disease-related prion fibrils provides insights into seeding barriers, Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol. 2022, 29, 962–965. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41594-022-00833-4

D.W. Conroy, Y. Xu, H. Shi, N. Gonzalez Salguero, R.N. Purusottam, M.D. Shannon, H.M. Al-Hashimi, C.P. Jaroniec, Probing Watson-Crick and Hoogsteen base pairing in duplex DNA using dynamic nuclear polarization solid-state NMR spectroscopy, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2022, 119, e2200681119. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2200681119

Z. Qi, K. Surewicz, W.K. Surewicz, C.P. Jaroniec, Influence of the dynamically disordered N-terminal tail domain on the amyloid core structure of human Y145Stop prion protein fibrils, Front. Mol. Biosci. 2022, 9, 841790. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmolb.2022.841790/

M. Zandian, N. Gonzalez Salguero, M.D. Shannon, R.N. Purusottam, T. Theint, M.G. Poirier, C.P. Jaroniec, Conformational dynamics of histone H3 tails in chromatin, J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2021, 12, 6174–6181. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c01187

S.O. Rabdano, M.D. Shannon, S.A. Izmailov, N. Gonzalez Salguero, M. Zandian, R.N. Purusottam, M.G. Poirier, N.R. Skrynnikov, C.P. Jaroniec, Histone H4 tails in nucleosomes: a fuzzy interaction with DNA, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2021, 60, 6480–6487. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.202012046

H.H. Dao, M.Z. Hlaing, Y. Ma, K. Surewicz, W.K. Surewicz, C.P. Jaroniec, ¹³C and ¹⁵N chemical shift assignments of A117V and M129V human Y145Stop prion protein amyloid fibrils, Biomol. NMR Assign. 2021, 15, 45–51. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12104-020-09981-4

A. Perez, K. Gaalswyk, C.P. Jaroniec, J.L. MacCallum, High accuracy protein structures from minimal sparse paramagnetic solid-state NMR restraints, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2019, 58, 6564–6568. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201811895

D. Aucoin, Y. Xia, T. Theint, P.S. Nadaud, K. Surewicz, W.K. Surewicz, C.P. Jaroniec, Protein-solvent interfaces in human Y145Stop prion protein amyloid fibrils probed by paramagnetic solid-state NMR spectroscopy, J. Struct. Biol. 2019, 206, 36–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsb.2018.04.002

M.D. Shannon, T. Theint, D. Mukhopadhyay, K. Surewicz, W.K. Surewicz, D. Marion, P. Schanda, C.P. Jaroniec, Conformational dynamics in the core of human Y145Stop prion protein amyloid probed by relaxation dispersion NMR, ChemPhysChem 2019, 20, 311-317. https://doi.org/10.1002/cphc.201800779

T. Theint, Y. Xia, P.S. Nadaud, D. Mukhopadhyay, C.D. Schwieters, K. Surewicz, W.K. Surewicz, C.P. Jaroniec, Structural studies of amyloid fibrils by paramagnetic solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2018, 140, 13161–13166. http://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.8b06758

D. Mukhopadhyay, C. Gupta, T. Theint, C.P. Jaroniec, Peptide bond conformation in peptides and proteins probed by dipolar coupling-chemical shift tensor correlation solid-state NMR, J. Magn. Reson. 2018, 297, 152–160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmr.2018.10.015

T. Theint, P.S. Nadaud, D. Aucoin, J.J. Helmus, S.P. Pondaven, K. Surewicz, W.K. Surewicz, C.P. Jaroniec, Species-dependent structural polymorphism of Y145Stop prion protein amyloid revealed by solid-state NMR spectroscopy, Nat. Commun. 2017, 8, 753. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00794-z

D. Mukhopadhyay, P.S. Nadaud, M.D. Shannon, C.P. Jaroniec, Rapid quantitative measurements of paramagnetic relaxation enhancements in Cu(II)-tagged proteins by proton-detected solid-state NMR spectroscopy, J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2017, 8, 5871–5877. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b02709

S. Mukherjee, S.P. Pondaven, K. Hand, J. Madine, C.P. Jaroniec, Effect of amino acid mutations on the conformational dynamics of amyloidogenic immunoglobulin light-chains: A combined NMR and in silico study, Sci. Rep. 2017, 7, 10339. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-10906-w

T. Theint, P.S. Nadaud, K. Surewicz, W.K. Surewicz, C.P. Jaroniec, ¹³C and ¹⁵N chemical shift assignments of mammalian Y145Stop prion protein amyloid fibrils, Biomol. NMR Assign. 2017, 11, 75-80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12104-016-9723-6