Peptide Publications Archive

Unmasking Thioaldehydes

Unmasking Thioaldehydes

Myers Lab

Cysteine thioaldehydes are fleeting, reactive intermediates implicated in penicillin biosynthesis, RiPP natural products, coenzyme A assembly, and sulfatase activation, yet their aqueous chemistry has resisted …

Unlocking the Power of Biosynthetic Tailoring Enzymes

Unlocking the Power of Biosynthetic Tailoring Enzymes

Barry Lab

Biosynthetic cytochrome P450 enzymes can selectively oxidize inert C–H bonds on complex cyclic peptides, but studying them has been nearly impossible without reliable access to …

Unlocking Cyclic Dipeptides

Unlocking Cyclic Dipeptides

Hecht Lab

Incorporating cyclic dipeptides into proteins with native ribosomes has long been hampered by ribosomal stalling, and loading two amino acids onto a single tRNA can …

Expanding Cyclic Space

Expanding Cyclic Space

Duan Lab

Designing cyclic peptides that incorporate non-canonical amino acids against dynamic protein interfaces is a compelling strategy, but the combinatorial explosion of sequence space makes structure-guided …

Blocking MS Autoantibodies

Blocking MS Autoantibodies

Kumar Lab

Current multiple sclerosis therapies suppress broad immune cell populations rather than the disease-specific autoantibodies that drive myelin destruction. A new computationally designed cyclic peptide targets …

Fibers Trap Persisters

Fibers Trap Persisters

Zhan Lab

Intracellular bacteria shelter inside macrophages, suppress the very immune machinery designed to destroy them, and resist antibiotics that cannot reach them. A new enzyme-triggered peptide …

Loop Surprise

Loop Surprise

Faure & Taillefumier Lab

Peptoids are celebrated for their helical folds, but a serendipitous discovery has revealed that hexamers with free termini can instead curl into a stable looplike …

Homocitrulline Reimagined

Homocitrulline Reimagined

Rosenzweig Lab

Homocitrulline is known in human biology only as a marker of chemical damage, arising when isocyanic acid nonenzymically carbamoylates lysine during aging and inflammation. Now …

Mapping Macrocycle Motion

Mapping Macrocycle Motion

Sun & Yudin Labs

Conventional NMR methods force dynamic macrocycles into a single averaged structure, obscuring the multiple conformers that govern permeability and activity. A new integrative framework combining …

Conducting Peptoid Sheets

Conducting Peptoid Sheets

Tran Lab

Peptoid nanosheets are prized for their programmable surfaces and enzymatic stability, but they have never been made electronically active. A new strategy exploits the crystalline …

Degraders Beat Hypoxia

Degraders Beat Hypoxia

Tavassoli Lab

Conventional PROTACs rely on small-molecule warheads, leaving protein–protein interaction targets beyond reach. By converting a cyclic peptide HIF-1α inhibitor into a VHL-recruiting degrader, researchers uncovered …

Chirality Targets Lysosomes

Chirality Targets Lysosomes

Li and Chen Labs

Swapping a single chiral residue in a peptide-drug conjugate shifts where it self-assembles inside a tumor cell, from the cell surface all the way into …

Dropout Finds Target

Dropout Finds Target

Tavassoli Lab

Most cyclic peptide screens hunt a known protein target. A new dropout platform asks a simpler question: which library members kill bacteria when expressed inside …

Steric Backbone Advantage

Steric Backbone Advantage

Morimoto & Sando Lab

N-alkyl peptides cross cell membranes with unusual efficiency, and removing their amide hydrogens has long been credited as the reason why. A new study isolates …

Stapled c-Myc Binds E-box DNA Without Max

Stapled c-Myc Binds E-box DNA Without Max

Mason Lab

c-Myc is intrinsically disordered and cannot bind DNA without its partner protein Max, a dependency that has stymied drug discovery for decades. A new intracellular …

Folding by Design

Folding by Design

Hemu Lab

Folding disulfide-rich peptides with three or more disulfide bonds has long frustrated chemists: without cellular machinery, the wrong bonds form first and kinetic traps accumulate. …

Thioamide Disrupts β-Sheets

Thioamide Disrupts β-Sheets

Petersson Lab

Swapping a single oxygen for sulfur in a peptide backbone sounds conservative, but a new semi-synthesis strategy reveals that one thioamide can unravel a cooperative …

Bicyclic Kinase Trap

Bicyclic Kinase Trap

Suga Lab

Bicyclic peptides that incorporate a thioisoindole bridge offer tighter conformational constraint than standard macrocycles, yet building them fast enough to work inside a high-throughput mRNA …

Aziridines by Metallopeptide

Aziridines by Metallopeptide

Miller Lab

Aziridines are prized synthetic building blocks, yet making them enantioselectively from open-chain Z-disubstituted alkenes has long resisted reliable catalyst design. A new dirhodium metallopeptide system …

Dual Resin Clicks

Dual Resin Clicks

Thomas Lab

Generating structurally diverse peptides on solid phase typically means modifying one site at a time, limiting how much chemical complexity a single sequence can carry. …

Deaminative UAA Synthesis

Deaminative UAA Synthesis

Singh Lab

Unnatural amino acids unlock drug-like peptides, but installing them with precise stereochemistry has resisted simple catalytic routes. A visible-light-driven copper catalyst now converts amine-derived Katritzky …

Choosing Conformations

Choosing Conformations

Yudin Lab

Macrocyclic peptides can fold into multiple conformations, but chemists have lacked a reliable chemical handle for selecting one over another. A late-stage lactone-opening reaction now …

Chirality Steers Condensates

Chirality Steers Condensates

Chen Lab

Switching a single residue's chirality in a tripeptide-drug conjugate redirects assembly away from amyloid-like fibers and toward liquid droplets, but only when Na⁺ or K⁺ …

Cycling on Bacteria

Cycling on Bacteria

Tharp Lab

Cell-surface display of cyclic peptide libraries offers a fluorescence-sortable alternative to phage display, but generating stable macrocycles directly on living bacteria has resisted clean, bioorthogonal …