Rate My Professor Marino Resendiz

Marino J. Resendiz is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Colorado Denver. He earned his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Utah, where he began his academic career working with Professor Peter J. Stang on the design and synthesis of supramolecular metallacyclic architectures and their properties as sensors and storage devices. Resendiz obtained his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles, under Professor Miguel A. Garcia-Garibay, developing solvent-free solid-to-solid reactions useful in the synthesis of complex natural products containing stereogenic quaternary centers. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University with Professor Marc M. Greenberg, investigating the mechanisms leading to RNA strand scission upon oxidative damage. His expertise areas include bio-organic chemistry, physical organic chemistry, and organic synthesis.

Resendiz's research lies at the interface of organic and biological chemistry, focusing on the use of photoactive short RNA libraries to explore RNA-ligand interactions for applications in biosensing technologies and potential therapeutics. He also investigates the potential link between RNA oxidative damage—such as 8-oxo-7,8-dihydropurine lesions—and various neurodegenerative and muscular diseases, studying how reactive oxygen species interact with RNA nucleobases and affect RNA structure and function. His laboratory employs organic synthesis, photochemistry, biochemical and biophysical techniques, and density functional theory. Resendiz has secured National Institutes of Health funding as Principal Investigator for projects including R15GM132816 on 8-oxo-7,8-dihydroguanosine in aptamer development and its impact on RNA structure (2019–2026) and R03AI185538 exploring the 5'-GUAC- sequence as an important RNA motif (2024–2026). Key publications include "Selective 8-oxo-rG stalling occurs in the catalytic core of polynucleotide phosphorylase (PNPase) during degradation" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2024), "8-Oxo-7,8-dihydropurines as Building Blocks to Enhance the Selectivity of an RNA Aptamer for Aminoglycosides" (ACS Chemical Biology, 2025), "Photochemical Control of RNA Structure by Disrupting π-Stacking" (Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2012), "Direct Strand Scission in Double Stranded RNA via a C5-Pyrimidine Radical" (Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2012), and "Radical Reactions with Double Memory of Chirality (2MOC) for the Enantiospecific Synthesis of Adjacent Stereogenic Quaternary Centers in Solution" (Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2009).