Diketopiperazines are peptides and also heterocycles like nucleobases. They often show up in prebiotic chemistry research, but are they really important? Check out a review from our group @AsianJOrgChem
dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajoc...

It's a Gas: Bioconjugation With Vapor‐Phase Reagents Gaseous reagents are an emerging class of bioconjugation reagents that can offer alternative selectivity paradigms for the construction of precise bioconjugates. A variety of both inert and highly re...

It may sound weird but recent bioconjugation methods often rely on a gas... Check out our collaborative review with Jun's advisor Zach Ball at Rice
doi.org/10.1002/chem...

Tryptophan Bioconjugation through Auxiliary Boron-Accelerated, Additive-Free Friedel–Crafts Alkylation Chemical tools have allowed the interrogation of molecular events in biological systems through the realization of additive-free labeling approaches such as strain-promoted chemistry. Although design ...

A classical Friedel-Crafts reaction may not be biocompatible partly because acid catalysts are needed. Our work in JACS_Au showed a boron unit makes it "catalyst-free" for tryptophan bioconjugation! The century-old reaction still has a lot going on!
doi.org/10.1021/jacs...

A cyclic peptide found in meteorite may undergo mechanochemical reactions with formaldehyde! The first prebiotic chemistry paper from our group published in ACS Bio&Med Chem Au.https://doi.org/10.1021/acsbiomedchemau.5c00167

Catalysis in Chemical Modification of Proteins Catalytic principles of synthetic organic chemistry have been increasingly applied to chemical modification of proteins during the recent years. This review article describes how seven types of catal...

Our collaborative review paper with the @K_Oisaki & Sato labs about catalysis of protein bioconjugation was published @ChemCatChem
See how 7 types of catalysis were used for modification of proteins!
doi.org/10.1002/cctc...

Catalytic Serine Labeling in Nonaqueous, Acidic Media Serine-targeting protein bioconjugation has been a formidable challenge because of the modest reactivity of the alkyl alcohol group in aqueous media. This work demonstrates a biomolecule-compatible, ...

Serine has diverse roles in living systems, but development of serine labeling tools has been a challenge. Our work published @ChemEurJ achieved chemoselective serine acylation in an unbiased manner!
doi.org/10.1002/chem...

Activity-based sensors identify cuproplasia and ferroplasia as druggable metal vulnerabilities in cancer! With @ginadenicola.bsky.social and Adam Renslo, we profile cancer cell lines to find those sensitive to Cu or Fe chelation www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #chemsky 1/n

Contextual Analysis of Scientific Publications for Advancing Writing Skills (CASPArS): Self-Learning for Science Writing Using Top Scientists’ Literature Writing is an essential component of scientific activity. As such, it is necessary to develop strategies to provide equitable training opportunities for science writing. In order to provide learners with ways to improve their writing regardless of their language background and/or institutional and departmental environments, this article describes a self-learning strategy, Contextual Analysis of Scientific Publications for Advancing writing Skills (CASPArS), that employs contextual analysis of top scientists’ publications. By using full-text search software to analyze several hundred selected publications, the CASPArS method affords a visual representation of proper usage of words/phrases of interest, facilitating learners to understand writing patterns and rules in leading scientific papers. The utility of the method has been demonstrated with several examples by using 500 non-open-access papers of synthetic organic chemistry and chemical biology fields from various journals such as Nature and Science. In order to increase the accessibility of the method for diverse communities around the world, a free-search software sin3rou and 500 open-access chemistry papers (e.g., ACS Central Science and Chemical Science) by 150 U.S. researchers have been included in the Supporting Information (available online with the full paper). Using this CASPARS strategy, learners/students are able to develop appropriate writing through “professors’ eyes” by taking advantage of established scientific writers’ experience and knowledge of language usage.

Want to improve your writing at a word level? Try the CASPArS method! It's free!
This method visualizes how and how often a word of interest is used in a certain context.
Virtually applicable for any given science field!
doi.org/10.1021/acs....