Andrew Gulick

Abstracts | emc2026

One week deadline to abstract submission for the #Enzyme mechanisms Conference.

Dec 1, 2025

www.enzymemechanismsconference.org/abstract-sub...

Happy 100th, structural biology pubs.aip.org/aca/sdy/arti...

Delightful perspective by George Phillips and Ed Lattman. Have a piece of cake everyone.

Directing Biosynthesis VIII - submit your oral abstract by 2 February 2026

Oral abstract submission is now open for Directing Biosynthesis VIII, an event that has been connecting #Biosynthesis researchers for over a decade.

Network and discuss the latest research, get all the details and submit: rsc.li/dbviii

#DBVIII #ChemSky

Notes on NIH matters as the government opens up again A tweet from someone apparently positioned to know claimed the damage totals from the government shutdown amounted to 379 study sections postponed, within which 24,380 NIH grant applications were s…

Notes on NIH matters as the government opens up again drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/11/14/n...

Protein Engineering of Biosynthetic Enzymes Unlocks Libraries of Bioactive Tilimycin Analogs
https://doi.org/10.1021/acscatal.5c05921

Screen grab from Dropbox saying Emojis in file names are finally here!

No no no begs every archivist. You are never going to be able to find anything. Please don’t start using emojis in file names. Who asked for this? What fresh hell is next?

EMC2026 29th Enzyme Mechanisms Conference Since their inception in 1969, Enzyme Mechanisms Conferences have brought together academic and industrial scientists to discuss new ideas at the forefront of mechanistic enzymology. EMC2024 will take...

As email filters make it hard to let people know about upcoming deadlines, I want to remind everyone here that the Enzyme Mechanisms Conference is fast approaching.

The program is up on the website and the list of posters (not yet posted) looks amazing.

www.enzymemechanismsconference.org

The National Crystallization Center is hiring for two positions: a research scientist position focused on progressing our crystallization optimization projects, and a research support specialist to support operations of the Crystallization Center!

a cartoon moose in a tuxedo is standing next to a squirrel and saying this time for sure . ALT: a cartoon moose in a tuxedo is standing next to a squirrel and saying this time for sure .

A New Thread on NIH Forward Funding

I recently posted an analysis of forward funding of NIH grants from 2015-25.

This analysis was flawed and should be ignored. I apologize for the misleading information

I present an analysis of my error and a revised analysis which I am confident is right.

1/25

An illustration of a man sitting at a desk in front of a crowd, with the hedline: Transitioning to ‘emeritus professor’ wasn’t always easy. Here’s how I adjusted.

"For me, success in retirement has involved mapping out a realistic plan that is both enjoyable and academically fulfilling." #ScienceWorkingLife https://scim.ag/47iicOq

bsky.app/profile/cenm...

Junior Investigators | emc2026

Last post about Flash Talk Deadline for the Enzyme Mechanisms Conference! Deadline is tomorrow (Saturday 11/1). See guidance on the website.

www.enzymemechanismsconference.org/junior-inves...

Charting the biosynthetic landscape of hybrid polyketide-nonribosomal peptide-specialized lipids Polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) synthase-like enzymes are best known for their role in membrane lipid biosynthesis in marine bacteria, but have also been repurposed for the assembly of specialized l...

Polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) synthase enzymes turn out to be far more versatile than we ever imagined! In our new preprint, we reveal a largely untapped biosynthetic space where they team up with PKSs and NRPSs to create new types of bioactive amphiphilic metabolites.
👉http://bit.ly/4hzUUak

I have seen too many junior-to-mid career people making this mistake so I need to get this message out there:

Once you get your first big award (R01, CAREER, standard NSF, BL2 DoD), your most important task is to publish papers that cite that grant for support.

#EnzymologySky :

There are still a few slots left. The deadline for the trainee opportunities at EMC2026 has been extended to November 1.

Structures from AlphaFold3 - while often impressively good - tend to fail representing the dynamic ensembles accurately. And often parts of the structure are not correct. Adding experimental data, directly in AlphaFold's diffusion step, provides physically realistic protein ensembles. This image shows two cases where AlphaFold3-only structures were largely improved by guiding with experimental data.

📢 New preprint:
Experiment-guided AlphaFold3 resolves accurate protein ensembles.
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

AlphaFold3 is incredible, but has crucial limitations: it typically collapses to a single conformation, ignoring the inherent dynamics of proteins. And it can be wrong. Here's a solution. 🧵👇

I actually had heard the the potential NIEHS appointment 2 days ago and broke the news about it at the STAT Summit. I did not share any details since I did not have confirmation.

Eric Green shared his views about the importance of process and applicant quality.

1/5

Morning re-post...

Ever true.

Junior Investigators | emc2026

Deadline is coming up for Trainee opportunities to present your poster via a Flash Talk at the Enzyme Mechanisms Conference (and compete for the Founders Award!)

www.enzymemechanismsconference.org/junior-inves...

Protein Engineering of Biosynthetic Enzymes Unlocks Libraries of Bioactive Tilimycin Analogs Natural products continue to inspire therapeutic innovation due to their structural complexity and biological potency. Pyrrolobenzodiazepines (PBDs), known for antitumor activity, function by covalently binding to guanine bases in DNA, a mechanism that is inherently species-agnostic. However, their potential as antibiotics remains underexplored as modest antibiotic activity is commonly seen with this class of compounds. Here, we produce analogs of tilimycin and tilivalline, two PBDs produced by the gut microbe Klebsiella oxytoca. We mutated NpsA, the nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) pathway protein responsible for initiating biosynthesis through adenylation of 3-hydroxyanthranilic acid on the pathway to form tilimycin and tilivalline, to enhance promiscuity with substrate analogs. Using structure and informatics-guided mutagenesis, we developed a rapid screening method to identify compatible enzyme-building block combinations to generate a panel of tilimycin and tilivalline analogs. We identified compounds that possess the ability to inhibit DNA polymerase and that show growth inhibitor activity with a DNA-repair mutant of E. coli. This work demonstrates the feasibility of NRPS reprogramming to use biocatalytic approaches to access non-natural derivatives with antibiotic potential and highlights tilimycin analogs as candidates for Gram-negative antibacterial development.

Happy to report our latest. Here, Monica used structure-guided mutants of the tilimycin/tilivalline NRPS to produce analogs from alternate building blocks. Several analogs of the pyrrolobenzodiazepine tilimycin were isolated and may show higher activity.

pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Poster with QR code linking to the position

I'm very excited to announce that UNC Biology has 6 faculty positions open this year! The first is for an Asst Professor who studies organismal resilience using an integrative approach 1/n
unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...

Love this! So talented and creative. It’s the soundtrack to the scientific apocalypse we are living in! I follow @ellecordova.bsky.social here but this wasn’t posted. This was from TikTok! Enjoy!

A rapid combinatorial assembly method for gene cluster characterisation illuminates glidobactin biosynthesis https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41050206/

Find a scientific community* to join. Regularly attend their conferences and contribute in meaningful ways. Don't flit about from topic to topic.

Added benefit: making lifelong friends from across the globe.

*not necessarily a formal society

correction: "directing PIs to put all their eggs in one basket."

I too strongly endorse this essay.

Whoa.

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

It seems the GRFP solicitation is FINALLY released (like 5 minutes ago)! Due dates have also been pushed back, thankfully! 🧪 🔭

www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

There seems to quite a few new faces lately, so if I haven’t already added you, but you’d like added please let me know and for anyone interested in following more microbial natural products folks, then our starter pack is now 100 strong go.bsky.app/72NeGsT