This infographic titled "The Women of the Periodic Table" highlights ten women and their contributions to element discovery. A central periodic table marks specific elements in green and orange, with lines connecting them to names and portraits. Featured scientists include Marie Curie (polonium, radium), Marguerite Perey (francium), and Clarice Phelps (tennessine). It traces history from early pioneers like Harriet Brooks to modern teams including Dawn Shaughnessy and Darleane Hoffman.

Today is the #InternationalDayOfWomenAndGirlsInScience 👩‍🔬 This graphic highlights women of the periodic table, the elements they discovered, and the two elements named after women.

Plenty more graphics on women in chemistry here: www.compoundchem.com/category/wom...

#ChemSky 🧪

Screening of FDA-Approved Small Molecules to Discover Inhibitors of the Pseudomonas aeruginosa Quorum-Sensing Enzyme, PqsE Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a notorious pathogen that is a leading cause of hospital-acquired infections, for which there are few treatment options. The quorum sensing (QS) pathway governs many pathogenic behaviors that allow for P. aeruginosa to stage infections. Within the QS pathway, there is a key protein–protein interaction between an enzyme, PqsE, and one of the master QS regulators, RhlR. Although its catalytic function is dispensable for its interaction with RhlR, previous mutagenic work characterizing the active site of PqsE identified active site mutations that induce a conformational change in PqsE, preventing it from forming a complex with RhlR. These active site mutations, when introduced stably into the genome of P. aeruginosa, also lead to a significant decrease in production of a key toxin, pyocyanin, and prevent colonization in the lungs of a murine host. Here, we performed a fluorescence polarization screen of an FDA-approved drug library to identify molecules that bind in the active site of PqsE. Three molecules were identified, two of which showed inhibitory activity consistent with a competitive mode of inhibition. One hit molecule, Apomorphine, had a distinctly different inhibitory profile and is potentially binding outside of the active site to allosterically inhibit enzyme activity of PqsE. All three hit molecules were tested in a cellular enzyme assay, and one of the competitive inhibitors, Vorinostat, was found to inhibit intracellular PqsE. Vorinostat is now being explored as a candidate for synthetic derivatization to inhibit the PqsE-RhlR protein–protein interaction via binding in the PqsE active site.

New paper from our lab! We screened a library of FDA-approved molecules for PqsE-binders and identified a competitive inhibitor that is P. aeruginosa-permeable, as well as a potential allosteric inhibitor. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Thank you!!

Another new preprint from our lab! This one details our efforts to produce new PqsE inhibitors and methods for assessing their potential to induce a conformational shift and weaken the interaction with RhlR. Haven't gotten there yet, but our methods are getting more sophisticated 😉

We had a wonderful time at #ACSFall2025! Bilalay, Ada, and Maggie all presented posters and everyone learned new things/met new people. Can’t wait for the next one! @acs.org

New preprint from our lab! Here we identified FDA-approved molecules that inhibit the enzyme activity of our favorite quorum sensing protein, PqsE. Work was led by 3 undergraduate and 1 MS student and in part comes from a collaboration with our Sep Lab neighbors! 🦠🧪

@lizneeley.bsky.social is publishing a weekly newsletter to track the ongoing attacks in science and higher ed. If you want to keep abreast without drowning in the news, I recommend it: buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

I was expecting more people to complain about the Texas carbon in the comments. 😭

Versatile Chaperones

Small-molecule protein chaperones may have more wide-ranging activity than we thought, and that's good news:

Congrats to Bonnie!

Oh I don’t have the self-control to not look!

Thanks John! I'd say you've turned out ok, so that definitely makes me feel better :)

Oof.. had a similar criticism with this one. Previous submission got a comment that they weren't sure I could lead synthetic work. So I got a letter from a collaborator in the department and that got picked apart in this review- "didn't give details on nature of the collaboration" etc. Can't win 🤷‍♀️

Ok so Twitter doesn't really help with these things anymore. Anyone have grant rejection stories to share that'll make me feel better? I got this one on my third and final attempt for a particular grant. And it came in at 10 pm. On New Year's Eve. 🙃 #newPI #grantrejection

And with that, we have a new Survivor winner! And a totally deserving winner at that. #Survivor47

Not loving that my first post on this app has a typo in it. Did we ever get that “edit post” button? 🤦🏻‍♀️

I wish I was! Sadly no... but now I'm gonna have major FOMO 😂 Have fun and say hi to people for me!

I'm reviewing NSF GRFP proposals and it blows my mind how amazing these candidates are!!
And I'm not surprised at all that so many people want to work with you! :)

Very excited to share our lab's first preprint! This work was lead by 2 undergrad and one masters student: Bilalay Tchadi, Jesse Derringer, and Anna Detweiler. Here we describe the ability of our favorite enzyme, PqsE, to fine-tune RhlR's transcription factor activity in a promoter-specific manner: