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Dr. Bergstrom is Walther Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Purdue University. His research focus is on the medicinal and bioorganic chemistry of nucleic acids and their component bases. Dr. Bergstrom has contributed greatly to our understanding of the molecular interactions of substrate nucleotides and DNA polymerases and has created a new set of tools consisting of unnatural nucleic acid components useful for studying DNA replication. He is also currently investigating the incorporation of a series of modified nucleosides into DNA primers, and then using these primers in PCR DNA replication experiments to determine the coding properties of the modified nucleosides. Recognition by these analogues provides detailed insight into the mechanism of DNA replication of polymerases. More recently he has begun an investigation of a related set of ribonucleoside analogs to study RNA polymerases. Dr. Bergstrom received his Ph.D. in synthetic chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and did his postdoctoral research at the University of Illinois. He has had faculty appointments at the University of California at Davis and University of North Dakota. He is a member of the editorial board of Nucleosides and Nucleotides, the editorial board of Bioconjugate Chemistry and the editor of Current Protocols in Nucleic Acid Chemistry. Dr. Bergstrom has been issued nine US patents and has authored numerous scientific publications on the synthesis and properties of nucleoside analogs. | 