News and Research Archive
Genetical Encoding
Reflecting recent work in the Schultz lab
Nicotinamide-containing cofactors play an essential role in many enzymes that catalyze two-electron redox reactions. However, it is difficult to engineer nicotinamide binding sites into proteins due to the extended nature...
Biomolecular Condensates
Reflecting recent work in the Baiz lab
Biomolecular condensates provide a mechanism for compartmentalization of biomolecules in eukaryotic cells. These liquid-like condensates are formed via liquid–liquid phase separation
Mammalian Esterase Activity
Reflecting recent work in the Raines lab
As a traceless, bioreversible modification, the esterification of carboxyl groups in peptides and proteins has the potential to increase their clinical utility. An impediment is the lack of strategies to quantify...
Anorexia and Weight Loss
Reflecting recent work in the Mapp lab
The melanocortin-3 receptor, MC3R, is a G-protein coupled receptor that regulates appetite and is a potential therapeutic target for anorexia and weight loss treatments...
Controlling Stereoselectivity
Reflecting recent work in the Wennemers lab
In a study from the Wennemers Lab at ETH, Zūrich, published in JACS, group members present an organocatalytic kinetic resolution to yield enantiomerically enriched β-branched aldehydes and γ-nitroaldehydes with three...
Highly Active & Stable Peptides
Reflecting recent work in the Suga lab
Nonproteinogenic amino acids, including D-α-, β-, and γ-amino acids, present in bioactive peptides play pivotal roles in their biochemical activities and proteolytic stabilities...
Antimicrobial Lipopeptides
Reflecting recent work in the Hamley lab
Chirality plays a crucial role in the self-assembly of biomolecules in nature. Peptides show chirality-dependent conformation and self-assembly. Lipidation of peptides occurs in vivo...
"PickaPep" Application
Reflecting recent work in the Steuer lab
Published in Peptide Science, the Steuer Group at ETH, Zūrich, presents "PICKAPEP," an application developed for Mac and Windows, enabling the virtual construction...
Non Classical Crystallization
Reflecting recent work from BASF
In a recent study, published in Advanced Functional Materials, researchers in the Kellermeier Lab at BASF, have used phage display screening to identify peptide motifs...
Polarized Luminescence
Reflecting recent work in the Bhattacharya lab
Circularly polarized luminescence, CPL, is gaining interest across various disciplines, including materials science, pharmaceuticals, and sensing technologies. Organic molecules...
Macroscopic Dipoles
Reflecting recent work in the Gopi lab
Crystalline materials exhibiting non-centrosymmetry and possessing substantial surface dipole moments play a critical role in piezoelectricity. Designing biocompatible self-assembled materials...
Solid-Phase Synthesis
Reflecting recent work in the Kodadek lab
Many disease-causing proteins lack deep, readily ligandable pockets. Macrocyclic peptides and peptidomimetic compounds are one class of molecules that have shown promise in engaging these...
Lipopeptidomimetics Tool
Reflecting recent work in the Mapp lab
A short, amphipathic peptide derived from transcriptional activators is transformed from a weak inhibitor of transcriptional protein–protein interactions (PPIs) to an effective inhibitor...
Antihapten Antibodies
Reflecting recent work in the Compton lab
Eliciting an antihapten antibody response to vaccination typically requires the use of constructs where multiple copies of the hapten are covalently attached to a larger carrier molecule...
Backbone N-Methylation
Reflecting recent work in the Wilson lab
A significant challenge in chemical biology is to understand and modulate protein–protein interactions, PPIs. Given that many PPIs involve a...
Macrocyclic Peptides
Reflecting recent work in the Kodadek lab
Macrocyclic peptides, MPs, are a class of compounds that have been shown to be particularly well suited for engaging difficult protein targets. However, their utility...
Site-Specific Probes
Reflecting recent work in the Jackson lab
Proteins produced with leucine analogues, where CH2F groups substitute specific methyl groups, can readily be probed by 19F NMR spectroscopy...
Triceptide Biocatalysts
Reflecting recent work in the Morinaka lab
Triceptides are a class of ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides defined by an aromatic C(sp2) to Cβ(sp3) bond...
Antifungal Resistance
Reflecting recent work in the Rubini lab
The pursuit of novel antifungal agents is imperative to tackle the threat of antifungal resistance, which poses major risks to both human health and to food security...
Custom Click Biochemistry
Reflecting recent work in the Yang lab
The development of oligomeric glucagon-like peptide-1, GLP-1, and GLP-1-containing coagonists holds promise for enhancing the therapeutic potential of the GLP-1-based drugs...
Graspetide Biosynthesis
Reflecting recent work in the Link lab
The ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptide, RiPP, superfamily of natural products includes many examples of cyclic peptides with diverse...
Peptide Imidazolones
Reflecting recent work in the VanVeller lab
Published in JACS, researchers in the VanVeller Group at Iowa State University, present a tandem amidine installation and cyclization with an...
Self-Assembled Nanofibers
Reflecting recent work in the Sabatino lab
Amphiphilic peptide sequences are conducive to secondary structures that self-assemble into higher-ordered peptide nanostructures. A select set...
Novel Substrate Prediction
Reflecting recent work in the Parker lab
The TAM family of receptor tyrosine kinases is implicated in multiple distinct oncogenic signaling pathways. However, to date, there are no...
Azobenzene Moiety
Reflecting recent work in the Wiedman lab
Azobenzenes are a series of compounds that can be isomerized upon irradiation with light. These molecules can...
Monoclonal Antibodies
Reflecting recent work in the Nowick lab
Monoclonal antibodies, mAbs, that target the β-amyloid peptide, Aβ, are important Alzheimer's disease research tools and are now being...
Novel, Rational Drug Design
Reflecting recent work in the Deber lab
As an alternative approach to conventional antibiotics, members of the Charles Deber laboratory, published in Peptide Science, explore a novel...
Self-Sorting Collagen
Reflecting recent work in the Wennemers lab
Nature uses elaborate methods to control protein assembly, including that of heterotrimeric collagen....
Lasso Peptides
Reflecting recent work in the Swanson lab
Lasso peptides make up a class of natural products characterized by a threaded structure. Given their small size and stability, chemical synthesis would offer tremendous potential...
N-Terminal Acetylation
Reflecting recent work in the Petersson lab
N-terminal acetylation is a chemical modification carried out by N-terminal acetyltransferases. A major member of this enzyme family, NatB, acts on much of the human proteome...
C–H Radiocyanation
Reflecting recent work in the Mapp and Sanford labs
In a collaborative work, published in Chemical Science, between the Mapp and Sanford groups, and researchers at the Department of Radiology, all at the University of Michigan, authors describe...
Max Phosphorylation
Reflecting recent work in the Jbara lab
The chemical synthesis of site-specifically modified transcription factors, TFs, is a powerful method to investigate how post-translational modifications influence TF-DNA...
Mechanistic Studies of CyClick Chemistry
Reflecting recent work in the Raj and Houk labs
Macrocyclic peptides have become increasingly important in the pharmaceutical industry. In collaborative work between the groups of Kendall N. Houk and Monika Raj, published in...
Human Serum Albumin
Reflecting recent work in the Lam lab
Human serum albumin, HSA, is the most abundant protein in human blood plasma. It plays a critical role in the native transportation of numerous drugs, metabolites, nutrients, and small molecules...
Tyrosine Phosphorylation
Reflecting recent work in the Hecht lab
The family of NF-κB transcriptional activators controls the expression of many genes, including those involved in cell survival and development. The family consists of...
Drug Candidate
Reflecting recent work in the Nowick lab
In this article, published in Chemical Science, members of the James S. Nowick group show that the antibiotic teixobactin is a promising drug candidate...
Stereoselectivity
Reflecting recent work in the Wennemers lab
In this article we show that stereoselective peptide catalysis is feasible in complex environments, including cell lysates...
Cyclic Peptides
Reflecting recent work in the Heinis lab
The synthesis of large numbers of cyclic peptides─required, for example, in screens for drug development─is currently limited by the need of chromatographic...
Ribosomal synthesis
Reflecting recent work in the Suga lab
Aromatic cyclic β2,3-amino acids (cβAAs), such as 2-aminobenzoic acid and 3-aminothiophene-2-carboxylic acid, are building blocks that can induce unique folding...
Kinase inhibitors
Reflecting recent work in the Kennedy lab
Leucine-Rich Repeat Kinase 2 (LRRK2) is a large, multidomain protein with dual kinase and GTPase function that is commonly mutated in both familial and idiopathic...
Protease Inhibitors
Reflecting recent work in the Petersson lab
Aberrant levels of cathepsin L (Cts L), a ubiquitously expressed endosomal cysteine protease, have been implicated in many diseases such as cancer and diabetes...
Protein Mimic
Reflecting recent work in the Arora lab
Members of the Arora lab constructed a synthetic Sos protein mimic that engages the wild-type and oncogenic forms of nucleotide-bound Ras and modulates downstream kinase signaling...
Rippled β-Sheet Motif
Reflecting recent work in the lab
In this conspectus, the authors give an overview of the early history of the rippled β-sheet and provide a detailed structural description/definition of this motif...
Peptide Cancer Vaccines
Reflecting recent work in the lab
In this article, Professor Pravin Kaumaya reviews his lab's approaches and strategies that focus on B-cell epitope cancer vaccines...
Production Technology
Reflecting recent work in the Schwarz lab
The production of peptides as active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) by recombinant technologies is of emerging interest. A reliable production platform, however...
Peptide Synthesis
Reflecting recent work in the Brik lab
Despite six decades of efforts to synthesize peptides and proteins bearing multiple disulfide bonds, this synthetic challenge remains an unsolved problem...
Peptide-Based Vaccines
Reflecting recent work in the lab
In this Review, the authors discuss peptide-based vaccines and their potential in three therapeutic areas: infectious disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancer...
Lariat Peptides
Reflecting recent work in the Lokey lab
Many lariat peptide natural products exhibit interesting biological activities, and some, such as griselimycin and didemnin B, are membrane permeable...
Endosomal Escape
Reflecting recent work in the Futaki lab
Endocytic pathways are practical routes for the intracellular delivery of biomacromolecules. Along with this, effective strategies for endosomal cargo release...
DNA nanotechnology
Reflecting recent work in the Seitz lab
DNA nanotechnology is an emerging field that promises fascinating opportunities for the manipulation and imaging of proteins on a cell surface...
Cyclic Peptide Ligands
Reflecting recent work in the Suga lab
Herein is identified three cyclic peptide ligands of K-Ras(G12D) using an integrated in vitro translation−mRNA display selection platform...
Social Media Guide
Reflecting recent work in the Heemstra lab
An ACS editorial that provides scientists a guide to navigating and using social media to share ideas and enhance connections...
Membrane-Lytic Peptides
Reflecting recent work in the Schneider lab
Herein is described the use of peptide backbone N-methylation as a new strategy to transform membrane-lytic peptides (MLPs) into cytocompatible intracellular delivery vehicles...
Bioorthogonal Conjugation
Reflecting recent work in the Salmain lab
This minireview intends provides an up‐to‐date overview on the various bioorthogonal strategies implemented for the conjugation of transition organometallic entities...
Coronavirus Inhibitors
Reflecting recent work in the Hoffman lab
The novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 that emerged in 2019 is caused by the virus SARS CoV-2 and named for its close genetic similarity to SARS CoV-1...
Cell Permeability
Reflecting recent work in the Verma lab
In a larger collaborative effort, these researchers have combined the strategies to identify the first examples of all-D α-helical stapled and stitched peptides.
Stapled Peptide
Reflecting recent work in the Garner lab
Eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E (eIF4E) has emerged as a promising cancer therapeutic target due to its role in the initiation of cap-dependent translation...
Protein Stability
Reflecting recent work in the Chatterjee lab
Abundant n → π* interactions between adjacent backbone carbonyl groups are predicted to play an important role in dictating the structure of proteins...
Modified Amino Acids
Reflecting recent work in the Wang lab
Herein, Wang et al. present a photoredox-catalyzed asymmetric method for the preparation of enantiopure β-thiolated/selenolated amino acids using a simple chiral auxiliary...
Tyrosine Sulfation
Reflecting recent work in the Payne lab
Researchers at the University of Sydney have shown that the evasin protein ACA-01 from the Amblyomma cajennense tick can be posttranslationally sulfated at two tyrosine residues...
Micelle-assisted Reactions
Reflecting recent work in the Devaraj lab
This publication shows that micelle-assisted reaction can facilitate native chemical ligations between a peptide-thioester and a Cys-peptide modified by a lipid-like moiety...
β-Turn Mimics
Reflecting recent work in the Thomson lab
Researchers report a simple reductive amination protocol to ligate two peptides, while simultaneously installing a β-turn mimic at the ligation junction...
Fluorescent Peptide
Reflecting recent work in the Nowick lab
Teixobactin is a nonribosomal antibiotic peptide that inhibits the biosynthesis of peptidoglycan and teichoic acid, however, teixobactin’s cellular site of action is unknown...
Molecular Transporters
Reflecting recent work in the Parang lab
In this collaborative study, researchers have designed a new generation of peptides based on previously designed cyclic cell-penetrating peptides. They have evaluated their cytotoxicity as well as uptake behavior...
C1B1 Inhibition
Reflecting recent work in the Pearce lab
In this recent publication, Puhl et al. have employed random peptide phage display to screen and select peptides that bind to the calcium and integrin binding protein 1 (CIB1)...
Cyclotide Production
Reflecting recent work in the Craik lab
In this manuscript researchers in Dr. Craik's lab describe a strategy to improve the production of cyclotides, which are usually produced and cyclized synthetically at a high cost and environmental impact for large scale.
Improved Thiol Protection
Reflecting recent work in the Distefano lab
Photoremovable caging groups are useful for biological applications because the deprotection process can be initiated by illumination with light without the necessity of adding additional reagents...
γ-Amino Acids Elongation
Reflecting recent work in the Suga lab
Because γ-amino acids generally undergo rapid self-cyclization upon esterification on the carboxyl group, for example, γ-aminoacyl-tRNA, there are no reports of the ribosomal elongation...
Nanosheet Fabrication
Reflecting recent work in the Conticello lab
Engineering free-standing 2D nanomaterials with compositional, spatial, and functional control across size regimes from the nano- to mesoscale represents a significant challenge....
Ice Nucleators
Reflecting recent work in the Derda lab
In a manuscript published in Langmuir, Yuki Kamijo and Ratmir Derda from the, University of Alberta, describe a screening system that employs the difference...
Ghost Peptides
Reflecting recent work in the Raines lab
A major hurdle in chemical biology is the delivery of native proteins into the cytosol of mammalian cells. Published in ACS Chemical Biology, and presented...
Short Peptides
Reflecting recent work in the Arora lab
Helical secondary and tertiary motifs are commonly observed as binding epitopes in natural and engineered protein scaffolds. While several strategies...
Roads to Rome
Reflecting recent work in the Schmidt lab
Ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides, RiPPs, are ubiquitous natural products. Bioactive RiPPs are produced from a precursor...