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Nature Chemical Biology 4, 527–528 (1 September 2008) | doi:10.1038/nchembio0908-527

Cross-dressing proteins by olefin metathesis

Kent Kirshenbaum & Paramjit S Arora

The covalent modification of biopolymers in living systems typically occurs with extraordinary chemoselectivity and regioselectivity. These reactions allow nature to 'accessorize' biopolymers at precise sites with an array of chemical functionalities that may be absent in the limited repertoire of monomer units available to the biosynthetic machinery.