I have been teaching undergraduate biochemistry and related courses since 2017 when I began teaching at Utica College. My experience includes teaching chemistry, biology, nursing, physical therapy, and health studies majors. I am interested in bridging the content of both biology and chemistry in my courses in a way that is accessible to a diverse group of students and encourages active learning and critical thinking.

The relationships between enzyme structure and substrate recognition

Blanden, Melanie. J., Ashok, Sudhat and Hougland, James. L. Mechanisms of CaaX Protein Processing: Protein Prenylation by FTase and GGTase-I Comprehensive Natural Products III: Chemistry and Biology. 2020

Blanden, Melanie J., Suazo, Kiall F., Hildebrandt, Emily R., Hardgrove, Daniel S., Patel, M., Saunders, William P., Distefano, Mark D., Schmidt, Walter K., and Hougland, James L. Efficient farnesylation of “forbidden” C-terminal C(x)3X sequences expands the scope of the prenylated proteome J. Biol. Chem., 2018, 293 (8), 2770-2785

Shala-Lawrence, Agnesa*, Blanden, Melanie J.*, Krylova, Svetlana M., Gangopadhyay, Soumyashree A., Beloborodov, Stanislav S., Hougland, James L., and Krylov, Sergey N. Simultaneous Analysis of a Non- Lipidated Protein and Its Lipidated Counterpart: Enabling Quantitative Investigation of Protein
Lipidation’s Impact on Cellular Regulation Anal Chem., 2017, 89 (24), 13502-13507 *Co-first Authors

Zhang, Yi, Blanden, Melanie J., Sudheer, Ch., Gangopadhyay, Soumyashree A., Rashidian, Mohammad, Hougland, James L., and Distefano, Mark D. Simultaneous Site-Specific Dual Protein Labeling Using Protein Prenyltransferases Bioconjugate Chem., 2015, 26 (12), 2542–2553