Peptide Publications Archive
Showing items in Chemical Biology · Clear filter
Minimal CSP Scaffolds
Tal-Gan Lab
Quorum sensing in Streptococcus sinensis depends on a competence-stimulating peptide whose minimum functional requirements were completely unknown. Reverse alanine scanning now reveals that nearly one-third …
Blue-Light Uncaging
Banghart Lab
One-photon photopharmacology in the brain has long depended on UV or violet light, with its poor tissue penetration and phototoxicity concerns. A new caged opioid …
Tryptophan Quenches All
Vendrell Lab
Fluorogenic amino acids that span the full visible spectrum could transform wash-free cell imaging and drug screening, but no single intramolecular quenching motif had proven …
Disulfide Architecture Decoded
Raj Lab
Disulfide bonds in peptides are typically treated as chemically identical, forcing chemists to reduce them all before making any modification. A new architecture-guided approach reveals …
Tagging Nanobodies Precisely
Distefano Lab
Conventional nanobody conjugation generates heterogeneous products that erode imaging performance in vivo. A new chemoenzymatic strategy using farnesyltransferase installs two orthogonal bioorthogonal handles in a …
Lipophilic Cation Switch
Waters Lab
Peptidomimetic inhibitors of histone reader proteins carry a fundamental contradiction: the cationic residues required for tight binding actively sabotage cell entry. A new class of …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Editing Serine's Silence
Li Lab
Serine and threonine dominate regulatory post-translational modifications in biology, yet chemical tools to edit them site-selectively in unprotected peptides have remained out of reach. A …
Bismuth Cyclisation Inside Living Cells
Jody Mason Lab
Cyclisation is one of the most dependable ways to make a peptide behave more like a drug, tightening its fold, sharpening target engagement, and slowing …
Probing GxxxG Interfaces
Newberry Lab
Glycine residues at GxxxG motifs stabilize transmembrane helix dimers through Cα–H hydrogen bonds, but their lack of side chains makes them difficult to engineer. Replacing …
Glycation Codes αSyn
Becker Lab
A single glycation mark on α-synuclein reshapes its entire aggregation behavior, but the outcome depends sharply on which lysine carries it. A new semisynthetic platform …
Tuning the Antigen
Pires Lab
Peptide-based cancer vaccines aim to train the immune system against tumor-specific neoantigens, and a growing share of those targets comes from post-translational modifications rather than …
Steering Cysteine Chemistry
Tsai Lab
Most reagents that target N-terminal cysteine consume both the amine and thiol, locking the ligation site into an inert heterocycle. A new steric-control strategy forces …
Labeling Serine Selectively
Chen Lab
Serine and threonine hydroxyl groups are among the most difficult side chains to modify selectively in complex peptides, yet they govern phosphorylation, glycosylation, and enzyme …
Chaperone Orientation Rules
Gierasch Lab
Three closely related Hsp70 molecular chaperones grip the same model peptides in strikingly different orientations: bacterial DnaK shows no directional preference, human Hsc70 leans toward …
Amide Proteome Mapped
Raj Lab
A palladium-mediated dehydration reaction converts asparagine and glutamine amides to nitriles, opening nearly 9% of the human proteome to chemoproteomic interrogation for the first time...
Silent Residues, Activated
Raj Lab
Asparagine and glutamine make up over 8% of the human proteome yet resist chemical modification — until now, when a palladium-mediated strategy converts their amide …
Light-Driven Ligation
Taylor Lab
A fully organic photosensitizer pair labels proteins inside living cells with 93% selectivity for tryptophan, reaching nuclear compartments without any metal catalyst
Sugar's Hidden Hand
Pratt Lab
A single O-GlcNAc on α-synuclein forces a distinct amyloid strain that spreads far less pathology in neurons and mouse models than the unmodified protein
Sweet Reprogramming of the Ribosome
Payne Group
A dipeptide reprogramming trick lets ribosomes build glycopeptide libraries for the first time, yielding potent P-selectin inhibitors and a monomeric LYTAC alternative
Switching Max On
Jbara Lab
A photocaged Max transcription factor sits dark and silent until a flash of UV light removes two chemical masks and restores full DNA-binding activity within …
Backbone Sensitivity
Cryle Lab
Researchers supervised by Professors Julien Tailhades and Max J. Cryle from Monash University, Australia, published in ACS Chemical Biology, have developed a chemoenzymatic strategy …