Shaun McKinnie

A high-throughput biocatalytic platform for screening isomeric kainoid natural products Shepherd and Ramachandra et al. present a fast, chromatography-free method for resolving isomeric products from engineered enzymes. This platform enables large-scale screening and identifies improved ...

Hey all, excited to share this collab w/
@shaunmckinnie.bsky.social
TL;DR we combined our expertise to develop and validate a MALDI-tims platform for screening the production of isomeric small molecules (~212 Da) directly from E coli colonies in high throughput
www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Thanks for letting me know! I should do a better job copy/pasting across platforms ha ha

Fixed link is here!

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

Whoops sorry let’s try this:

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

Excited to update that our 2023/24 CURE lab manuscript is now published at the Journal of Natural Products (pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac…) and was selected as the ACS Editor's Choice article for Dec. 30, 2025! Huge congrats to Austin and our phenomenal 12 undergrad co-authors!

Half of the skit here - thanks Lia for recording!

Introducing the new McKinnie lab aka the ChemPop (Ph)Demon Hunters!

Incredibly fun participating in the annual Chemistry and Biochemistry Department Halloween Costume Party - it’s always exciting to see everyone’s costumes, creativity, and acting talent on full display!

Huge congratulations to Dr. Jennifer Cordoza for completing her PhD (aka PLPhD) and giving a tour-de-force dissertation seminar on PLP enzyme discovery, early biocatalytic application, and phenomenal undergrad mentoring efforts! Congrats again Dr. Cordoza, we’re all very proud of you!!

IDBac: an open-access web platform and compendium for the identification of bacteria by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.15.682631v1

CURE-ating the substrate scope and functional residues of nonheme iron(II) α-ketoglutarate dependent hydroxylase BesE Nonheme iron (II) α-ketoglutarate-dependent dioxygenases (Fe/αKGs) play important roles in functionalizing biological substrates from individual amino acids up to macromolecules. BesE, a unique homolo...

Thrilled to share our latest pre-print where our 2023-2024 class of 12 talented undergraduate researchers and (now Dr.) Austin Hopiavuori interrogated the unique nonheme iron enzyme BesE using a chemical and biochemical approach! Check it out here:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thanks a lot Ale!!

Thank you so much Monica!!

Thank you so much Courtney! We did it!

Thank you so much Shabnam, that means a lot and I really appreciate it! Great that we got to connect in person this year and looking forward to your future successes and achievements too!

Tenured!

It’s been a remarkable six years at UC Santa Cruz full of many unexpected obstacles but even more triumphs! I’m incredibly proud of the phenomenal team that we’ve assembled and am excited to have the continued opportunity to grow and share our collective successes!

Congrats to Dr. Austin Hopiavuori for giving a masterful dissertation seminar today and being McKinnie lab PhD #2! Austin has done phenomenal work on biosynthetic non-heme iron enzymes and helped quarterback our inaugural CURE lab last year. Incredibly proud of you Dr. Hopiavuori!

Huge congrats to Dr. Jackson Baumgartner for completing his PhD dissertation seminar this afternoon! Jackson was an inaugural lab member and has done a phenomenal job exploring VHPO enzymology! Incredibly proud of all your achievements Dr. Baumgartner and thanks for being PhD #1 from McKinnie lab!

Come be our colleague! UCSC Chemistry and Biochemistry is looking for a tenure track Assistant Teaching Professor for general chemistry courses!

Bhalla Lab - Research Specialist (Junior Specialist) University of California, Santa Cruz is hiring. Apply now!

Hi all, I'm hiring a junior specialist/research technician for my lab at UCSC. An ideal applicant would be an undergraduate who would like more research experience before applying for grad school but all are welcome to apply 🧪
recruit.ucsc.edu/JPF01882

Really fun visit to @ucsantacruz.bsky.social for a seminar
Huge thanks to @drlaurasanchez.bsky.social for the invite
Tried my best to channel banana slugs and was rewarded with a couple along the walk in 😁

👋 first post here! I’m excited to start by sharing our work on CRISPRa-programmed embryo models! We show that CRISPR activation of 2 elements is sufficient to form an embryo model similar to a natural embryo www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @cp-cellstemcell.bsky.social @ucscgenomics.bsky.social

Thrilled to team up with @drlaurasanchez.bsky.social, @robbieshepherd.bsky.social, Conrad, and Alex and summarize a great amount of work around how advances in MS have accelerated high throughput screening for enzyme evolution! Also excited to share our collaborative work in this area pretty soon 👀!

Phenomenal seminar by Prof. Jaclyn Winter today at UCSC! Remarkable and inspiring work on Great Salt Lake microbiology, metagenomics, biosynthesis, NP isolation, structure elucidation and so much more - huge thanks for making the trip out here Jackie!

Better late than never, loved hosting Dr Moore @ucsantacruz.bsky.social we enjoyed a nice hike before this rain curtesy of @shaunmckinnie.bsky.social #workhusbands #peptides

Specificity and Stereoselectivity of Cryptic Sulfotransferases Sulfotransferases (STs) are ubiquitous enzymes found in all living organisms. These enzymes convert amines to sulfamates, and alcohols to sulfates, on a wide variety of biologically relevant molecules...

Super stoked to share this pre-print covering our work on some sulfotransferase enzymes with surprising stereoselectivity!

doi.org/10.26434/che...

Wooooo congratulations, incredibly well deserved!

I got a sneak peek of this awesome story in Dec. 2023 by being on Dr. Manasa Ramachandra’s excellent PhD defense committee! And was so impressed that we had to recruit her as a postdoc for our own oxidative cyclase projects! Huge congratulations Manasa, @avenaross.bsky.social and team!

Marine Natural Products/Marine Biotechnology - Assistant Professor University of California, San Diego is hiring. Apply now!

Come be my colleague! We’re hiring an assistant professor in marine natural products and marine biotechnology at SIO - check out this link to learn more: apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF04101

Amazing seminar from Aaron Puri today who shared his lab’s work on microbial chemical ecology, natural product chemistry, biosynthesis, and cool new analytical techniques! Thanks for making the trip out to UCSC!

Excited to have Arron Puri visiting @ucsantacruz.bsky.social for #SMComm today @shaunmckinnie.bsky.social