Peptide Publications Archive
Silencing the Warhead
Derda Lab
Covalent genetically encoded peptide libraries hold enormous promise for discovering irreversible inhibitors, but installing reactive electrophilic warheads under basic conditions causes those warheads to quench …
Unmasking Thioaldehydes
Myers Lab
Cysteine thioaldehydes are fleeting, reactive intermediates implicated in penicillin biosynthesis, RiPP natural products, coenzyme A assembly, and sulfatase activation, yet their aqueous chemistry has resisted …
Unlocking the Power of Biosynthetic Tailoring Enzymes
Barry Lab
Biosynthetic cytochrome P450 enzymes can selectively oxidize inert C–H bonds on complex cyclic peptides, but studying them has been nearly impossible without reliable access to …
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 …
Expanding Cyclic Space
Duan Lab
Designing cyclic peptides that incorporate non-canonical amino acids against dynamic protein interfaces is a compelling strategy, but the combinatorial explosion of sequence space makes structure-guided …
Blocking MS Autoantibodies
Kumar Lab
Current multiple sclerosis therapies suppress broad immune cell populations rather than the disease-specific autoantibodies that drive myelin destruction. A new computationally designed cyclic peptide targets …
Fibers Trap Persisters
Zhan Lab
Intracellular bacteria shelter inside macrophages, suppress the very immune machinery designed to destroy them, and resist antibiotics that cannot reach them. A new enzyme-triggered peptide …
Loop Surprise
Faure & Taillefumier Lab
Peptoids are celebrated for their helical folds, but a serendipitous discovery has revealed that hexamers with free termini can instead curl into a stable looplike …
Homocitrulline Reimagined
Rosenzweig Lab
Homocitrulline is known in human biology only as a marker of chemical damage, arising when isocyanic acid nonenzymically carbamoylates lysine during aging and inflammation. Now …
Mapping Macrocycle Motion
Sun & Yudin Labs
Conventional NMR methods force dynamic macrocycles into a single averaged structure, obscuring the multiple conformers that govern permeability and activity. A new integrative framework combining …
Conducting Peptoid Sheets
Tran Lab
Peptoid nanosheets are prized for their programmable surfaces and enzymatic stability, but they have never been made electronically active. A new strategy exploits the crystalline …
Degraders Beat Hypoxia
Tavassoli Lab
Conventional PROTACs rely on small-molecule warheads, leaving protein–protein interaction targets beyond reach. By converting a cyclic peptide HIF-1α inhibitor into a VHL-recruiting degrader, researchers uncovered …
Chirality Targets Lysosomes
Li and Chen Labs
Swapping a single chiral residue in a peptide-drug conjugate shifts where it self-assembles inside a tumor cell, from the cell surface all the way into …
Dropout Finds Target
Tavassoli Lab
Most cyclic peptide screens hunt a known protein target. A new dropout platform asks a simpler question: which library members kill bacteria when expressed inside …
Steric Backbone Advantage
Morimoto & Sando Lab
N-alkyl peptides cross cell membranes with unusual efficiency, and removing their amide hydrogens has long been credited as the reason why. A new study isolates …
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 …
Folding by Design
Hemu Lab
Folding disulfide-rich peptides with three or more disulfide bonds has long frustrated chemists: without cellular machinery, the wrong bonds form first and kinetic traps accumulate. …
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 …
Bicyclic Kinase Trap
Suga Lab
Bicyclic peptides that incorporate a thioisoindole bridge offer tighter conformational constraint than standard macrocycles, yet building them fast enough to work inside a high-throughput mRNA …
Aziridines by Metallopeptide
Miller Lab
Aziridines are prized synthetic building blocks, yet making them enantioselectively from open-chain Z-disubstituted alkenes has long resisted reliable catalyst design. A new dirhodium metallopeptide system …
Dual Resin Clicks
Thomas Lab
Generating structurally diverse peptides on solid phase typically means modifying one site at a time, limiting how much chemical complexity a single sequence can carry. …
Deaminative UAA Synthesis
Singh Lab
Unnatural amino acids unlock drug-like peptides, but installing them with precise stereochemistry has resisted simple catalytic routes. A visible-light-driven copper catalyst now converts amine-derived Katritzky …
Choosing Conformations
Yudin Lab
Macrocyclic peptides can fold into multiple conformations, but chemists have lacked a reliable chemical handle for selecting one over another. A late-stage lactone-opening reaction now …
Chirality Steers Condensates
Chen Lab
Switching a single residue's chirality in a tripeptide-drug conjugate redirects assembly away from amyloid-like fibers and toward liquid droplets, but only when Na⁺ or K⁺ …