Congrats to Dipanwita Banerjee in our lab for leading this - also thanks to "Mano" Manoharan and Jayanta Kundu from Alnylam for collaborating --

Our study of pseudouridines in RNA was just published - it turns out that they stabilize RNA from cleavage by having much less nucleophilic 2'-OH groups:
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscentsci.5c01345

I also had the privilege of speaking at the Samsung Science & Technology Foundation Global Research Symposium on Chemical Biology a few days ago in San Diego. It was packed with great research and discussions. A belated thanks to @Samsung

I attended and spoke at the ACS Western Regional meeting this weekend - thanks to @ByronPurse for the invitation and for organizing a fun session on nucleoside and nucleic acids chemistry!

Sequence‐Specific Installation of Aryl Groups in RNA via DNA‐Catalyst Conjugates DNA oligonucleotides carrying amine nucleophilic catalysts are employed to deliver aryl groups to complementary sites in RNA under physiological conditions. The strategy can be used to sequence-speci...

Using a DNA-catalyst conjugate to place aryl groups at specific sequences in RNA -
Congrats to Sumon Pratihar for leading the work!

doi.org/10.1002/anie.202515681

Localized 2′-OH Acylation at Poly(A) Extends RNA Translation The potential of coding RNAs as a general therapeutic modality is limited by their short intracellular lifetime. Here, we investigate the effects of localized post-transcriptional RNA modification on ...

New and simple chemical modifications to poly(A) tails extend protein expression -- a really easy one-pot method

Great work by Linglan Fang and Wenrui Zhong in our lab!

doi.org/10.1021/jacs.5c11900

Peter was a huge influence on me - he made it cool to combine organic chem and nucleic acids. I was lucky to have him as a postdoc mentor

Spoke at Monday's ACS symposium in honor of Peter Dervan's birthday - it was a great time seeing Peter, Jackie, and the many alums who he trained

thanks also to our collaborators in the Ford Lab!

Long term goal is to activate DNA repair to suppress mutagenesis...

Congratulations to Yixuan (Edward) Gao for publication of his paper on the first SMUG1 small molecule activator - it upregulates pyrimidine repair in cellular models. doi.org/10.1016/j.dnarep.2025.103809

also, are those the "orbs" that everyone's talking about?

...and then I told it to give it the correct twist - not a particularly good result

so I asked ChatGPT to make a cartoon of DNA - and it made it left handed...

CRISPR technology’s next wave: Eight companies to watch in 2024 Driven by CASGEVY's success, the CRISPR field is experiencing substantial growth with a new wave of companies.

from LABiotech
www.labiotech.eu/best-biotech...

this one looks AI generated
-not a helix, but looks helix-y

Congrats to Edward Gao on the publication of his paper - an improved synthesis of damaged pyrimidines -

doi: 10.1080/15257770.2024.2437038

image credit: ScienceAlert

when a helix is not a helix

credit: Neuroscience News

DNA Publicity Art of the Day:

✘ left-hand twist
✅ dryer hose construction

credit: istock / Getty Images Plus

inaccurate DNA art of the day:
gives new meaning to "DNA damage"

Very small RNA-reactive reagents can map RNA in crowded spaces in the cell -
congrats to Dr. Lu Xiao!
doi: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2024.09.009