Pericyclases
Winner: 2021 Organic Division Horizon Prize: Bioorganic Chemistry Award
For the discovery of a new class of enzymes, the pericyclases, that catalyse reactions in biosynthesis of complex natural products, and for identifying their mechanisms.
Celebrate the Pericyclases team
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A collaboration between the Tang, Houk and Garg labs at the University of California, Los Angeles, led by a team of postdoctoral scholars and graduate students, discovered and characterized a family of natural enzymes called the pericyclases.
Enzymes are proteins found naturally in cells, facilitating and speeding up chemical reactions within the cell. Pericyclases catalyse a special class of organic reactions called pericyclic reactions – where the reactants form a cyclical structure before forming products. These reactions are commonplace in laboratory synthesis of small molecules (i.e. commodity chemicals or pharmaceuticals) and are often considered ‘abiological’ or ‘invented’ by synthetic chemists.
Read moreBy combining enzyme discovery, mutational studies, X-ray crystallography, quantum mechanics, molecular dynamics, and synthetic chemistry, the 18 members of our team, located in the US, China, Japan, and Spain, have revealed previously unknown secrets of nature.