Nature has developed a plethora of protein machinery to operate and maintain nearly every task of cellular life. These processes are tightly regulated via post-expression modifications—transformations that modulate intracellular protein synthesis, folding, and activation. Methods to prepare homogeneously and precisely modified proteins are essential to probe their function and design new bioactive modalities.
Our research focuses on combining rational design and synthetic chemistry to prepare novel biomacromolecules that are often challenging or impractical to prepare via common biological means. We aim to expand the scope of accessible protein targets and allow the development of new biopolymers to probe their function and refine their activity.
Our programs include the development of new synthetic transformations to chemically build and precisely modify proteins and oligonucleotides to produce new molecules with novel physicochemical properties and programmed activity for fundamental research and therapeutic applications.
Our projects involve modern (bio)organic chemistry and chemical biology, such as solid-phase synthesis, combinatorial chemistry, late-stage transformations, and organometallic chemistry.