Keri Backus

Photosensitizer proximity labeling captures the lipid and protein interactomes - Nature Chemical Biology Becker et. al developed a proteomic proximity labeling platform named POCA, which makes use of a photosensitizer for singlet oxygen production and protein capture in the presence of amine, enabling pr...

And a link, since the one above is broken www.nature.com/articles/s41...

And lastly, Andrew is on the job hunt for Bay area-adjacent positions. So, if anyone is looking to hire a stellar organic chemist turned chemical and systems biologist, look no further

For a quick summary @uclacb.bsky.social al for the nice writeup of our paper www.chemistry.ucla.edu/news/innovat...

And thanks to the reviewers and editors--this one was a journey and the final product really is light years from our preprint.

Also big shoutout to @rhodamine110.bsky.social for his amazing generosity in sharing dyes. JF570 is a very special molecule!

So many wonderful collaborators helped make this project happen, including Zander Nguyen, JP Kennelly, Julia Mack, @soongookhong.bsky.social, Rohith Nagari, LJ Cui, Xu Xiao, and especially Peter Tontonoz, who introduced me to the wild world of lipids.

Excited to share our new paper and lipid- and protein-directed photocatalytic labeling method (POCA) just out in @natchembio.nature.com. tinyurl.com/2kcxuvvv. Big congrats to first author Andrew Becker and the whole team for launching our lab into the wild world of singlet oxygen interactomics.

New paper in @jcb.org! We found a new regulator of p62 phase separation, autophagy, and antioxidant signaling. It is an E3 ligase adaptor called SHKBP1, but the effect is via direct p62 binding, not ubiquitination. Congrats to Lin Luan & team! @weillinstitute.bsky.social

Graphical abstract on LipoID workflow

LipoID profiles lipid droplet interactions and identifies interorganelle regulators

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Profiling the proteome-wide selectivity of diverse electrophiles - Nature Chemistry Covalent inhibitors are powerful entities in drug discovery. Now the amino acid selectivity and reactivity of a diverse electrophile library have been assessed proteome-wide using an unbiased workflow...

How can we study target engagement and selectivity of covalent inhibitors? Which electrophilic probes are best suited to study a certain amino acid?

Our study on "Profiling the proteome-wide selectivity of diverse electrophiles" is published in Nature Chemistry.(1/7)

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Real-time API control of mass specs has been hard to get started (C#, VS, etc). Mike Hoopmann's recent work makes dev easier & more open!:

Nova - lightweight dev library
schweppelab.github.io/Nova/ pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....

Helios - a unified instrument API now @ JPR
github.com/SchweppeLab/...

Congratulations to my great friend and colleague @bradylabupenn.bsky.social for this well deserved award!
@pennmedcso.bsky.social @penncancer.bsky.social

🚨 Save the date! 🚨
2nd LA Mass Spec Day:
Oct 17, 2025 @ UCLA South Bay 🎉
Talks, posters, networking + plenaries by Jennifer Van Eyk & Melissa Hoffman!

Register 👉 forms.gle/e6A9XWxiRF6K...

Submit abstracts 👉 forms.gle/RCf5v3Gab5V8...

More info to follow soon

About 800 NIH, NSF research grants suspended following UCLA federal funding cuts - Daily Bruin About 800 research grants have been suspended at UCLA, according to a Friday email from Vice Chancellor for Research and Creative Activities Roger Wakimoto. Wakimoto said in the email, which was sent ...

Daily Bruin article about the ~800 frozen grants at UCLA including some from my lab dailybruin.com/2025/08/02/a...

Trump freezes $200 million in UCLA science and medical research funding, citing antisemitism The Trump administration has frozen roughly $200 million in National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and other federal agency-funded research at UCLA, citing allegations the school d...

Suspension of all grants to UCLA www.latimes.com/california/s...

Consider signing the letter to support NIH and the "Bethesda Declaration" (www.standupforscience.net/bethesda-dec...) #ASMS2025 @asms.org

ASSIGNMENT: COMMENT ON SCHEDULE F

1 week left to comment about Schedule F, potentially making NIH institute and center director essentially political appointees.

www.regulations.gov/commenton/OP...

1/n

Join @lindsaykpino.com, me, and our amazing panelists for the #ASMS2025 #Chemoproteomics workshop on Monday!

And after a brief interlude of recommending CSY1 and all the MIRA study sections, now ART recommendations are back to normal

Anyone else notice that ART is now giving different study section assignments compared to earlier in the week? Same title and abstract last night and today, different strong and possible matches...?

We will be hosting the 2025 ONO Pharma Foundation Annual Symposium on June 23 at the Royal Sonesta Boston. This event offers an opportunity to explore the latest breakthroughs presented by ONO INITIATIVE awardees and to discuss groundbreaking science in chemical biology. (1/2)

New paper from our lab joint with Val Arboleda @val-arboleda.bsky.social

The 13th General Meeting of the International Proteolysis Society will be held in Búsios, Brazil Oct 26-30, 2025. Training workshops will be held at the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz Oct 23-23. Register now! Links below.

1/3

The fantastically successful NIGMS MIRA R35 "expired" on May 17, after the most recent deadline--these removals are the most aggressive attack on American science in the current series of devastating actions 🧪

Excited to see this out in @science.org today!! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Great news: NIH postbac program is recruiting again! If your grad school plans were affected by program cutbacks or admissions freezes this year I highly encourage you to apply, this could be a perfect opportunity. Please repost.

www.training.nih.gov/research-tra...

Congrats to all the award winners and especially to Backus Lab PhD student Flowreen Shikwana and undergrad Joelle Darrouj!

U of Michigan @umich.edu set aside funds from central to support researchers with unexpected disruption in federal funding for up to 6 months.

Are any other institutions doing this? Seems like a good move.

#Medsky #NIH #federalfunding #researchfunding 🧪

record.umich.edu/articles/uni...

a cartoon says hey everybody an old man 's talking while bart simpson looks on ALT: a cartoon says hey everybody an old man 's talking while bart simpson looks on

Bluetorial: Women, courage, and leadership

What follows will include some generalizations based on population averages of what I have experienced over the course of my career. There are, of course, exceptions in every group who are substantially more to one extreme or the other.

One of the most significant and challenging projects of my career so far. PepCentric: a scalable computational platform utilizing novel 2-D fragment indexing for rapid peptide-centric searches, enabling proteogenomics searches against billions of spectra in seconds. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...