C-GEM talked to Dr. Paul Peterson and Dr. Carly Schissel about their experiences as postdoctoral scholars. Dr. Peterson is an NIH postdoctoral scholar in the Miller lab at Yale University, and Dr. Schissel is a Miller Institute Research Fellow in the Schepartz lab at UC… Read More »Recap: C-GEM Chats Careers with Postdocs
Dr. Carly Schissel (Miller Fellow, Schepartz Lab) has accepted a position as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Penn State. She starts this Fall. Carly’s lab will focus on the design and discovery of bioactive and therapeutic peptides, taking advantage of molecular biology, synthetic chemistry,… Read More »Dr. Carly Schissel accepts faculty position at Penn State
This week, Dr. Alexandra Kent (postdoctoral scholar, Cate lab), Dr. Chandrima Majumdar (postdoctoral scholar, Cate lab), and C-GEM Executive Director Dr. Sarah Smaga all attended the 2025 ASBMB Annual Meeting in Chicago. Alexandra and Chandrima both presented posters and were selected to speak in the… Read More »Two C-GEM postdocs and Executive Director Smaga Present at ASBMB
Congratulations to Arjun Garapaty (undergraduate) and Kaitlyn Szalay (SURP scholar, 2021) for winning NSF GRFP awards. Arjun is graduating from UC Berkeley in May, and Kaitlyn is a PhD candidate in the Chatterjee lab at Boston College. Congratulations to Alex Solivan (graduate student), Isaac Garcia… Read More »C-GEM students receive NSF GRFP award and honorable mentions
On Wednesday, C-GEM talked to Dr. Sofia Garakyaraghi, Associate Publisher for ACS Publications, and Dr. Megan Hochstrasser, Director of Publishing at Arcadia Science. Dr. Garakyaraghi provided a perspective on the traditional publishing system, while Dr. Hochstrasser talked about her role at a biotech startup looking… Read More »Recap: C-GEM Chats Careers in Scientific Publishing
On Saturday, C-GEM helped kick off the 12th annual Atlanta Science Festival at Georgia Tech’s Celebrate STEAM day. Over 5,000 attendees came to Georgia Tech to try hands-on activities for all ages, covering topics like robotics, biology, space, art, and more. Our booth featured MaryAgnes… Read More »C-GEM brings polymer science to Atlanta Science Festival
C-GEM researchers developed a novel post-translational backbone editing reaction to replace a peptide bond with a C-C bond as diketones and heterocycles. This general strategy provides the first example of a C–C bond forming reaction to take place within the peptide backbone, as well as… Read More »Peptide Backbone Editing via Post-Translational O to C Acyl Shift (JACS, 2025)
C-GEM researchers found that a single atom change on tRNA—O to S on the 3′ terminal adenosine—does not hinder regular translation. Changing the 3’ oxo-ester on tRNA to a more reactive thioester had the potential to impact translation positively or negatively at multiple steps in… Read More »Thioesters Support Efficient Protein Biosynthesis by the Ribosome (ACS Cent Sci, 2025)
C-GEM researchers investigated whether preventing the binding of ribosomal protein bS1 could improve ribosome orthogonality. A current, common strategy for generating orthogonal ribosomes involves controlling mRNA and ribosome interactions by modifying the Shine-Dalgarno and anti-Shine-Dalgarno sequences, the sequence that sits upstream of the start codon… Read More »Role of Ribosomal Protein bS1 in Orthogonal mRNA Start Codon Selection (Biochemistry, 2025)
C-GEM researchers developed a fast, simple, and generalizable method to assay aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase activity by detecting the acylated tRNA product using liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry. C-GEM first developed this method as a way to identify aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase enzymes that accept non-α-amino acid substrates even at extremely… Read More »Direct and quantitative analysis of tRNA acylation using intact tRNA liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (Nat Protoc, 2025)