Dirk Trauner

Opticial Control of Cholesterol, attempting to stay as close to the original as possible. Congratulations to Michael Zott, who defined and spearheaded this study, and to our wonderful collaborator Luca Laraia!

Development of Photoswitchable Cholesterol Derivatives through Side Chain Replacement Cholesterol is ubiquitous in biology, shaping membrane properties and serving as a biosynthetic precursor for essential signaling molecules and hormones─and, in some contexts, acting as a signaling mo...

Delighted to have collaborated with the @dirktrauner.bsky.social lab on the development and characterisation of #photoswitchable #cholesterol derivatives, now out in @jacs.acspublications.org! (1/3) pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....

Synthesis of Collinoketones via Biomimetic [6 + 4] Cycloaddition Cycloadditions are among the most powerful reactions for constructing molecular complexity. The archetypal example is the [4 + 2] (Diels–Alder) cycloaddition, which efficiently furnishes cyclohexene d...

[6+4] Cycloadditions! Introducing our first dive into this fascinating subject in a very enjoyable collaboration with Ken Houk and his team. Congrats to Harrison and Tufan!

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

A prodrug targeting CIM6P/IGF2R enhances memory in healthy mice and reverses deficits in an Angelman syndrome mouse model - Translational Psychiatry Translational Psychiatry - A prodrug targeting CIM6P/IGF2R enhances memory in healthy mice and reverses deficits in an Angelman syndrome mouse model

As my memory is not as good anymore as it once was, I am excited to share this exciting collaboration with Cristina Alberini (NYU) with you: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It has been quite an emotional week for me — first, reconnecting with my Berkeley past, and then looking to the future by celebrating with my former graduate student Nina Hartrampf. Congrats, Nina, and, yes, "Peptide können alles!"

It was wonderful to return to UC Berkeley and deliver a lecture with Clayton Heathcock in the audience.

Thrilled to return to UC Berkeley for the Clayton Heathcock Lecture on November 4!

Excited to speak at Pitt Chemistry this Thursday!

Getting ready for the 2025 Trauner Group Retreat!

Optical Control of Membrane Viscosity Modulates ER-to-Golgi Trafficking The lipid composition of cellular membranes is highly dynamic and undergoes continuous remodeling, affecting the biophysical properties critical to biological function. Here, we introduce an optical a...

Excited to share our new @pubs.acs.org paper! We engineered cells with ~10% photolipids in the ER membrane. This enabled optical control of membrane viscosity to study its impact on ER→Golgi protein transport. @dirktrauner.bsky.social @noemijimenezrojo.bsky.social

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

Breaking a Lewis Acidity Trend for Rare Earths by Excited State Quenching Facilitating different chemistries between the rare earth (RE = La–Lu, Sc, Y) ions is of significant interest for their separations. While the bulk of attention has been on maximizing the small differ...

Just out: Our collaboration with Eric Schelter & Randall Wilharm on parsing the fascinating photochemistry of lanthanides with azobenzene photoswitches. A deep dive into light and rare earths en route to more efficient separations.

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

Greetings from the GRC on Artificial Molecular Switches and Motors! It’s exciting to see how the field has grown and is moving toward everyday applications—think photoswitchable tattoos!

I love the Hoya carnosa in my office climbing on polytwistane.

I had a great time at the University of Rochester as the Victor Chambers Lecturer! And I really enjoyed the amazing George Eastman House and Museum, built by a millionaire (nowadays billionaire) who was civic minded and kept a low profile.

Thanks - if you see something that needs correction of amendment please let us know.

We have updated our "Chemical Neuroscience" course to include pentameric ligand-gated channels and the first GPCRs. www.traunergroup.org/teaching

Check out our approach toward disciformycin and gulmirecin, spearheaded by Peter Ruehmann @nyuchemistry.

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

Ready to take off as a synthetic chemist? Check out this tutorial review we wrote with Frank Glorius and Jasper Tyler!

I am teaching my favorite course again this semester:
"Chemical Neuroscience - a Synthetic Approach".
We are posting some materials online, check them out.

www.traunergroup.org/teaching

We lost a towering figure in synthesis. It was a huge honor to serve as Amos’ colleague.

Dearomative Diels-Alder reactions are currently hot in total synthesis. They go back to Peter Yates (who trained my mentor Sam Danishefsky). And the Wessely reaction was also discovered in Vienna :)

And here is a challenge to you sialyl aficionados: Why do newborns excrete polysialic acids? Where does it come from? From polysialylated GPCRs? Can’t be on that scale. I never found that answer.

Zbiral was also one of the first chemists to work on sialic acid. We had to obtain it through hydrolysis of meconium, the stuff newborns excrete in their first days. It contains large amounts of polysialic acid. Later, we switched to Chinese birds' nests. Fun times!

My first chemistry professor in Vienna, Erich Zbiral, shall not be forgotten. Everybody loves the Tanabe-Eschenmoser Fragmentation but the analogous Zbiral-Fragmentation of epoxy vinyl azides is equally cool.

Dopamine D1 receptor activation in the striatum is sufficient to drive reinforcement of anteceding cortical patterns Timed dopamine signals underlie reinforcement learning, favoring neural activity patterns that drive behaviors with positive outcomes. In the striatum…

Check out our latest application of proximity-based photopharmacology (PBPP), published in Neuron.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Concise Synthesis of (−)-Veratramine and (−)-20-iso-Veratramine via Aromative Diels–Alder Reaction A concise and convergent synthesis of the isosteroidal alkaloids veratramine and 20-iso-veratramine has been accomplished. A Horner–Wadsworth–Emmons olefination joins two chiral building blocks of app...

Check out our paper on veratramine and isosteroidal alkaloids, now published in JACS.

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

As efficacy switches, they also provide insight into how opioids can switch from weak to strong agonists!

Introducing a new class of potent opioid analgesics that remain in the periphery (hence no respiratory depression) and can be locally activated with light (hence no constipation). Great collab with Seva Katritch, Cornelius Gati, and Josh Levitz.

biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Great collab with Seva Katritch, Cornelius Gati, and Josh Levitz.

Great collab with Seva Katritch, Cornelius Gati, and Josh Levitz.