Themed collection Most popular 2024 chemical biology articles

The dynamic nature of bacterial lipid diversity and membrane properties in response to stress conditions is discussed. This emerging area has implications for a range of cellular processes and drug design for selective cell targeting.

This perspective focuses on the latest understanding of the folding-promotion mechanisms by chaperones and oxidoreductases and recent progress in the development of chemical mimics that possess activities comparable to enzymes.

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) has been developed as a potential cancer treatment approach owing to its non-invasiveness, spatiotemporal control and limited side effects.

In the quest to overcome traditional chemotherapy limitations, this review explores targeted drug delivery via folate receptor-guided nanocarriers and drug conjugates bridging chemical and biomedical perspectives emphasizing brain and breast cancer.

Rational design is used to optimize peptidomimetic inhibitors of the TACC3/Aurora-A kinase interaction.

The asymmetric physical properties of the two SH3 domains of GRB2, including dynamics and binding affinities, may contribute to the formation of liquid–liquid phase separation.

Neutron crystallography revealed protonation states in TthSHMT-FA complex. Glu53 is protonated but other residues maintain protonation states upon FA binding. Structural analyses support key roles of Glu53 and gating loop dynamics in SHMT function.

Covalent DFOB-DOTA dual chelator (‘D2’) binds ⁸⁹Zr (DFOB) and ¹⁷⁷Lu (DOTA) regio-selectively enabling ⁸⁹Zr–¹⁷⁷Lu pairing as a novel cancer-targeting theranostic.

Ferrocene correlates with ferroptosis: multiple approaches to explore ferrocene-appended GPX4 inhibitors as dual-function ferroptosis inducers, which consummate the potential of ferrocene in ferroptosis-targeted drug development.

Bacterial DNA-damage repair activates the SOS response, which promotes hypermutation and antibiotic resistance. SAR investigation identified OXF-077, a small molecule DNA-repair and SOS-response inhibitor that suppresses resistance evolution.

Automated flow peptide synthesis (AFPS) gives access to peptides and proteins with post-translational modifications (PTMs) and enables investigation of PTM-mediated regulation, and was used to study the PTM-dependence of the MYC:Bin1 interaction.

DiffBindFR, a diffusion model based flexible full-atom protein–ligand docking tool, demonstrates its superior docking and side-chain refinement accuracy with reliable physical plausibility.

A protein-based model of carbon monoxide dehydrogenase displays distinct X-ray absorption, EPR, and vibrational signatures upon CO and CN⁻ binding that support ligand-dependent electronic rearrangement throughout the nickel–iron–sulfur core.

Rational design of environmentally-sensitive bimane probes with tunable properties holds promise for studying neurodegenerative disease.

We present the first D–A–D aza-BODIPY scaffold to construct CT-coupled J-aggregates, which show promising results for highly efficient phototherapy.

The utilization of the cationic-pyridinium activated ester strategy facilitates the chemoselective labeling of lysine residues within proteins, enabling activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) both in vitro and in live cells.

Liquid–liquid phase separation (LLPS) exhibited by an ordered protein β-lactoglobulin (β-LG) under crowded environment prompts alterations in conformational distribution leading to emergence of new promiscuous (esterase-like) activity.

The second coordination sphere, Asp721, participates in a hydrogen bond with an iron-coordinated water molecule, thus compensating for the missing facial triad carboxylate in AspH and enabling stereoselective C–H oxidation.

Human serum albumin (HSA) not only serves as a crucial carrier of various ligands but also modulates the aggregation of amyloidogenic proteins, including alpha synuclein (αSyn), which is associated with Parkinson's disease and other synucleinopathies.

ZIF-8 vaccine enhances the humoral immune response through sustained antigen exposure to the immune system whilst zinc adjuvants the vaccine via inducing T cell activation.

Polarization of macrophage to M1 phenotype by in situ activation of imiquimod using bioorthogonal nanozymes for anticancer therapy.

Amyloid fibrils of α-synuclein are a hallmark of Parkinsons disease and in this study, we characterise the thermodynamic stability of different amyloid polymorphs.

The exposure of DNA to UV light may result in electron transfer between the bases. It can entail self-repair of common DNA lesions and the efficiency of these two processes is controlled by stacking overlap of the nucleobases.

PGN_MS2: an in silico PGN library for automated LC-MS/MS spectral deconvolution of bacterial peptidoglycan fragments (PGNs).

The differential transmetallation of Dp4e4mT complexes provides valuable insights into their biological mechanism of action, off-target effects, and their potential therapeutic applications.

A highly effective cancer therapeutic nanovaccine could modulate tumor microenvironment to enhance photodynamic therapy on immunogenic cell death (ICD) induction and favor Mn(III)-mediated C-centered radical (˙R) generation to further strengthen ICD.