Ken Houk’s new work on the dynamics of Diels-Alder reactions has appeared in his inaugural PNAS article after Ken’s election to the National Academy of Sciences. The work is featured on the UCLA newsroom with links to the movies showing the progress of Diels-Alder reactions. .

Sabeeha Merchant has been awarded the 2012 Darbaker Prize in Phycology for meritorious work in the study of microscopic algae by the Botanical Society of America. Sabeeha has been instrumental in developing the genetics and genomics of Chlamydomonas as a model organism. Her work has elucidated the role of metabolic cofactors and iron and copper […]

The Feigon laboratory has determined the structure of a key protein-RNA complex in telomerase, an enzyme that maintains the DNA at the ends of chromosomes. Telomerase activity is important in both aging and most cancers. Using a combination of X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy they determined the structure of Tetrahymena thermophila telomerase holoenzyme protein, p65, […]

Xiangfeng Duan has won the inaugural International Union of Materials Research Societies (IUMRS) and the Materials Research Society (MRS) “IUMRS – MRS Singapore Young Researcher Award”. Xiangfeng was selected from among 89 nominatees for this prestigious award which will be presented to him in Singapore at the International Conference of Young Researchers on Advanced Materials […]

The Yeates laboratory and collaborators have designed protein molecules that self-assemble to form molecular cages with dimensions in the mid-nanometer range. The recent work, published in Science on June 1, brings to fruition a strategy proposed by Yeates and his former graduate students more than ten years ago. A second publication co-authored by Yeates in […]

Proteins are generally unstable, and as a result are usually shipped and stored at regulated temperatures, which increases costs. Heather Maynard and graduate students Rock Mancini and Juneyoung Lee synthesized a polymer to covalently attach to proteins that stabilizes the biomolecules to environmental stressors. There are a lot Food and Drug Administration approved protein-polymer conjugates […]

We are happy to announce that Ken Houk has been awarded the 2012 Robert Robinson Award by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). This award is for contributions to organic chemistry made by a researcher after the age of 55. The award was presented for Ken’s “inspirational and insightful development of the distortion/interaction theory of […]

Professor Sabeeha Merchant is the recipient of a 2012 Humboldt Research Award. These awards, granted by the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation to scientists from around the world, are aimed at fostering collaborations with German scientists. With support from this award, Professor Merchant will be spending her sabbatical this year at the Max Planck Institute in […]