Chemical Matters
The official blog of C-GEM
Applying to Summer Undergraduate Research Programs: Why, How, and More!
The Center for Genetically Encoded Materials (C-GEM) Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) is one of many undergraduate research experience (URE) programs that allows a student to do research i…
The Future of the Ribosome and its Role in the Future of the World
Dina Tekle (left) and Nicole Rivera (right) are undergraduate students in the 2021 C-GEM summer research program, who are integrating ribosomal mutation data for the purpose of accelerating research v…
Ribosomes: A vision of the future utilizing antibiotic-ribosome relationships
Alexis Vanzandt (left) and Kaitlyn Szalay (right) are undergraduate students who participated in the C-GEM summer research program. Their project focused on analyzing and integrating antibiotic-riboso…
PylRS innovation and its contribution to the future of research and medicine
Yuna Lee (left) and Emma Yin (right) are undergraduate students who participated in the 2021 C-GEM summer research program. They are working to create a Pyrrolysine synthetase (PylRS) database, which …
The journey to creating unnatural polymers using the ribosome
Margaret Adenusi (left) and Alyssa Virola-Iarussi (right) are undergraduate students in the 2021 C-GEM summer research program, who are analyzing acylation data to identify structure-activity relation…
Dealing with the unnatural – the MHC way
Can the antigen recognition process be modulated if the structure of the antigen is modified
Hachimoji DNA: The Eight-letter Genetic Code
Hachimoji DNA contains four natural bases (A, T, C, G) and four extra unnatural bases (P, Z, S, B).
Isolation through unity: creating orthogonal ribosomes through tethered subunit assembly
A new method resolves cross-assembly between wild type and engineered ribosomes.
Sequence-defined Multifunctional Polyethers
For several decades, polyethers, such as polyethylene glycol (PEG) have garnered tremendous interest as functional biomaterials due to their biocompatible nature.
Cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) is a powerful way to explore the synthesis of proteins and other polymers outside of the cellular environment
Cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) is a powerful way to explore the synthesis of proteins and other polymers outside of the cellular environment
EvolvR: where precision meets diversity
C-GEM scientists explain EvolvR technology.
Mitigating translation arrest caused by D-α-amino acids
A recent study by Ruben L. Gonzalez Jr. and coworkers provides insight into how to improve the incorporation of D-α-amino acids into proteins.
Driving orthogonality between variant pyrrolysyl-tRNA synthetase/tRNA pairs
By Patrick Ginther In a recent 2018 Nature news & views, the work of Jason Chin and co-workers was highlighted for the lab’s extraordinary work on developing new tools for synthetic biology [1].…
Ronald Breaker’s “Riboswitches and Translation Control”
Riboswitches are defined as RNA structures, typically found in the 5’ untranslated region (5’UTR) of mRNA, that sense and respond to small molecules, metabolites, or coenzymes to regulate transcri…
Ribosome assembly revealed by cryo-EM
Ribosome assembly is a remarkably complex cellular process. In the yeast large subunit (60S) alone, it requires the ordered association and folding of 3 rRNAs and 46 r-proteins as the nascent ribosome…
Replacement of a histidine by a non-canonical amino acid to generate a dependent organism
In a recent paper in JACS, Schultz and co-workers present a strategy where replacing a key amino acid of an enzyme by a non-standard amino acid (nsAA) produces an organism that requires this nsAA for …
Addition by subtraction
Posttranslational modifications (PTMs) are responsible for some of the most exotic ribosomally synthesized peptide backbones in biology.
More peptides with backbone modifications from wild type ribosomes in vitro
the most recent issue of Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry, a paper from Matthew Hartman’s lab highlights the use of an editing-deficient valine-tRNA synthetase (ValRS T222P) to incorporate 11 non-ca…