Top: (Left to right) Dr. Qi Xie (postdoc, Schepartz lab), Dr. Preeta Pratakshya (postdoc, Francis lab), Amos Nissley (graduate student, Cate lab), Roan Winthrop (undergraduate, Cate lab). Bottom left: Pasta-mers made at the Bay Area Science Festival with 3D printed examples of RNA and proteins.… Read More »C-GEM brings polymer science to the Bay Area
On Sunday, C-GEM participated in the Cambridge Science Carnival at the Kendall/MIT Open Space. The Cambridge Science Carnival is an annual, family-friendly science extravaganza, featuring over 100 STEAM activities, including C-GEM’s “Pasta-mers” activity with a fluorescent flourish. C-GEM scientists taught the science of biopolymers to… Read More »C-GEM brings polymer science to the Cambridge Science Carnival
Most scientists have a complex love/hate relationship with peptides, especially in the field of drug discovery. Peptides are encodable, for sure, but they are also structurally featureless and often display exceptionally poor bioavailability and cell permeability. In this work, C-GEM researchers developed chemistry with the… Read More »Chemical and ribosomal synthesis of atropisomeric and macrocyclic peptides with embedded quinolines (Nat Chem, 2025)
Researchers at the NSF Center for Genetically Encoded Materials (C-GEM) developed a novel and versatile chemo-ribosomal strategy to generate isolable quantities of protein-derived biopolymers containing site-specific backbone modifications. This strategy relies on an intramolecular backbone-extension acyl rearrangement (BEAR) reaction that post-translationally and site-specifically rearranges the… Read More »Site-selective protein editing by backbone extension acyl rearrangements (Nat Chem Biol, 2025)
By Joshua Davisson Better Flexizyme reactions! This paper describes a method to improve the yields of flexizyme-promoted tRNA aminoacylation in vitro. Inspired by possible origins of life reaction conditions, performing flexizyme reactions in an ice eutectic phase reduces some of the critical disadvantages of flexizyme… Read More »High Yield, Low Magnesium Flexizyme Reactions in a Water-Ice Eutectic Phase (Biochemistry 2025)
Congratulations to Scott Miller for winning the 2026 ACS Gabor A. Somorjai Award for Creative Research in Catalysis. This award recognizes outstanding theoretical, experimental, or developmental research resulting in the advancement of understanding or the application of catalysis. Miller is one of many ACS awardees… Read More »Professor Scott Miller Wins the ACS Gabor A. Somorjai Award for Creative Research in Catalysis
C-GEM has been renewed to continue solving chemistry’s “Holy Grail” problem of how to synthesize truly sequence-defined chemical polymers, oligomeric molecules possessing both a pre-determined, diverse sequence, and a defined length. In the last five years, C-GEM scientists have site-selectively generated C-C bonds in ribosomally… Read More »C-GEM renewed for Phase IIb
C-GEM transformed the Nobel Prize-winning technique of directed evolution into an educational board game! Directed Evolution: The Game tasks players with solving a puzzle where your pieces are determined by a roll of the dice. During a game, players are awarded puzzle pieces based on… Read More »Learn about Directed Evolution Through Play
By Amos Nissley C-GEM researchers identified archaeal ribosomes with highly divergent peptidyl transferase centers (PTC). Cryo-EM structures of the Pyrobaculum calidifontis ribosome revealed that unique archaeal ribosomal protein (rProtein) sequences reorganize the PTC, enabling rRNA sequence variation. Modifying E. coli rProteins to resemble those in… Read More »Structure of an archaeal ribosome reveals a divergent active site and hibernation factor (Nat Microbiol, 2025)
C-GEM talked to Professor Jeffery Tharp and Professor Allison Walker about their experiences as faculty at research-intensive institutions. Professor Tharp is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Indiana University, and Professor Walker is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biological Sciences at… Read More »Recap: C-GEM Chats Careers with R1 Faculty