Walker of the earth RNA & Chemical Biology practitioner @J_A_C_S associate editor
Jupiter, FL, USA
Joined August 2013
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This is a fascinating Nobel Prize, and congratulations to the winners. I would be remiss, however, not to acknowledge Donna Blackmond’s mechanistic brilliance and her substantial contributions to our understanding of this chemistry.
Kenso Soai – awarded the 2026 #NobelPrize in Chemistry – designed the first chemical reaction in which only one of the potential mirror images was formed. Other than life itself, no one had ever achieved this feat. The Soai reaction is one of the most spectacular chemical experiments ever conducted.
Matt Disney retweeted
BREAKING NEWS
The 2026 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.”
Matt Disney retweeted
Nat. Rev. Chem. "Tales of total synthesis" nature.com/articles/s41570-0… rdcu.be/fCANH
K. C. Nicolaou のインタビュー。80 歳で引退か。一つの時代の終わりを感じる。印象に残る仕事として taxol, brevetoxin B, calicheamicin を挙げてるが、maitotoxin の全合成完成させたかっただろうなあ
I call them “friend-tors” first you need to trust them and you need to be friends…
The most successful early-career researchers often rely on a network of mentors who each have different roles — from advising on research and grants to making professional introductions and providing emotional support
go.nature.com/4y0eDXV
Matt Disney retweeted
We're excited to announce our speakers at the upcoming ACS150 #JACS Symposium Series: @UCT_news, celebrating 150 years of the @AmerChemSociety and chemical discovery.
📅 10-11 September
🔗 Apply to attend this free event: go.acs.org/eD3
Interesting paper (not from our lab) applying Inforna and RiboTACs to target and degrade a microRNA precursor implicated in breast cancer bone metastasis. A nice example of using RNA structure to identify a ligandable site and convert binding into targeted RNA degradation.
science.org/doi/full/10.1126…
RIP Ada Yonath. I gave a commencement speech at UF a few weeks ago. Here is a passage inspired by Ada “Commencement speakers are also expected to give advice. I once heard Ada Yonath speak to a group of young scientists. She is the Nobel Prize-winning scientist whose work helped reveal the structure of the ribosome—the machine that makes every protein in your body. A young scientist asked what advice she would give. She replied,
"I have one piece of advice: Don't ask for advice." She was right.
You know yourselves better than I do. You should have confidence in your ability to solve your own problems. You made it here. The best predictor of the future is the past. You have already shown what you are capable of by being here today.”
We, the Weizmann Institute of Science community, deeply mourn the passing of Prof. Ada Yonath of the Institute’s Chemical and Structural Biology Department. Prof. Yonath pioneered the study of the ribosome, the cell’s protein factory, and was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her research in this field. Her decades-long scientific journey led to an understanding of how various antibiotics work, helping pave the way for the development of new antibiotics and the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Yonath, the first Israeli woman scientist to win a Nobel Prize, also received dozens of other awards and honors, including the Israel Prize in Chemistry and the Wolf Prize in Chemistry. Prof. Yonath exemplified how scientific vision, the courage to choose a major scientific question and unwavering dedication to its pursuit can lead to extraordinary achievements and expand the boundaries of knowledge for the future of humanity.
May her memory be a blessing.
bit.ly/ada-yonath-eng
Congratulations to Xiaoxuan (Lexie) Su, who did the bulk of the work on our new bioRxiv paper (biorxiv.org/content/10.64898…), and many thanks to Zhonglin Liu for his help.
Using MAPT/tau as a model nuclear transcript, we identified ZFP36 as an RNA-binding protein that can decrease nuclear RNA levels. We then mined chemoproteomic datasets—or, as I call them, the “Encyclopedia Cravattica” ;-)—for covalent ligands that bind ZFP36.
We show that small molecules can recruit endogenous ZFP36 to nuclear transcripts and promote their degradation.
More broadly, chemoproteomics may provide access to a much larger set of endogenous RNA effectors for ribonuclease-targeting chimeras and targeted RNA degradation.
1/6 MYC has long been considered “undruggable.” Instead of trying to drug the protein, we went after its RNA. This work is part of our long-standing effort to expand the druggability of genetically defined disease targets at the level of mRNA.
5/6 This means existing therapies may do more than combine with an RNA degrader. They may induce the cellular machinery needed to enable RNA degradation, opening a new strategy for combination treatment.
6/6 This was a major collaborative effort with Nikhil C. Munshi, Eugenio Morelli, first author Domenico Maisano, Chungen Li, Tenghui Wang, Mehmet Kemal Samur, Yuquan Tong, Jessica Disney, Michael Cameron, and many others.
Read the paper: doi.org/10.1182/blood.202603…
