On Tuesday, C-GEM researchers—Vincent Chim (graduate student, UC Berkeley), Helena Roberts-Mataric (graduate student, UC Berkeley), Izzi Piper (graduate student, UC Berkeley), and Qi Xie (postdoc, UC Berkeley)—participated in Community Resources for Science’s (CRS) Bay Area Scientists Inspiring Students (BASIS) program. C-GEM partnered with CRS to… Read More »C-GEM brings polymer science to Bay Area elementary schoolers
By Alexandra Kent The goal of C-GEM is to generate ribosomally synthesized, sequence-defined polymers using a diverse set of non-natural monomers. Although ribosomes are known to incorporate some unnatural monomers, the basis for observed differences in incorporation efficiencies of different stereoisomers remains poorly understood. In… Read More »Co-Translational Incorporation of (R)- and (S)-β2-Hydroxy Acids In Vitro: A Structural and Biochemical Study on the E. coli Ribosome (J Am Chem Soc, 2026)
By Chintan Soni Proteins are powerful and versatile molecules with immense potential in medicine and the materials industry, but they are built from just 20 natural α-amino acids, linked through an α- amide backbone, limiting the range diversity of structures and functions they can achieve.… Read More »Co-Translational Incorporation of (R)- and (S)-β2-Hydroxyacids In Vivo: Directed Evolution of Efficient Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetases (J Am Chem Soc, 2026)
Left: (left to right) Christopher Alabi (Senior Investigator, Cornell), Abhishek Chatterjee (Senior Investigator, Boston College), Alex Solivan (graduate student, UC Berkeley), Taylor Dover (graduate student, Yale), Meghna Bajaj (graduate student, Cornell), Carly Schissel (Assistant Professor, Penn State, former C-GEM postdoctoral scholar).Right: Meghna Bajaj holding her… Read More »C-GEM Represents at 2026 Peptides GRC
C-GEM talked to Kirsten Atilho, PhD, and Kayli Martinez, PhD, about their experiences in business consulting. Dr. Atilho is a Director for Innovative Medicine Strategy & Portfolio Organization at Johnson and Johnson, and Dr. Martinez is a Business Consultant with Veeva System’s Quality Business Consulting… Read More »Recap: C-GEM Chats Careers with Business Consultants
Many genetic code expansion (GCE) techniques rely on the native ability that some organisms have to recode the stop codon TAG to incorporate pyrrolysine, a special amino acid not encoded in other organisms. Previously, in known organisms with this ability, pyrrolysine was only incorporated at… Read More »An archaeal genetic code with all TAG codons as pyrrolysine. (Science, 2025)
Left to Right: Adrienne Garcia (SURP/PREC scholar, Francis lab), Emma Lawler (SURP scholar, Schepartz lab), and Nikki Angelisanti (undergraduate, Schepartz lab). Two weeks ago, Nikki Angelisanti (undergraduate, Schepartz lab) and Emma Lawler (SURP scholar, Schepartz lab) attended the 2025 ACS Western Regional Meeting in San… Read More »C-GEM undergraduates present their research at conferences
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)