Chemical genetics articles from across Nature Portfolio

β-Amino acid-containing macrolactams are a known natural product family exhibiting structural and functional diversity, however, the natural chemical space of this family remains underexplored. Here, the authors use a targeted β-amino acid-specific homology-based multi-query search to identify their potential microbial producers, explore the variation of their biosynthetic gene clusters, heterologously produce ciromicin A, and identify new macrotermycin derivatives.

CATCHFIRE (chemically assisted tethering of chimera by fluorogenic-induced recognition) tools are small tags that can chemically dimerize with turn-on fluorescence, enabling simultaneous control and visualization of protein proximity.

Cell-based and molecular exploration provide comparative characterization of currently developed PI3K inhibitors and structural insights for future inhibitor design.

A metabolically bioactivated selective imidazothiazole nematicide shows comparable effectiveness at controlling plant root infection by Meloidogyne incognita to commercial nematicides, which are traditionally nonselective and toxic.

A new chemically induced dimerization (CID) pair exhibits fluorescence upon dimerization for the first time. Moreover, the CID pair is small and offers easily reversible dimerization that can be repeated multiple times.

A drug-resistance mechanism emphasizes the dependence of epigenetic signaling on acetyl-CoA.

A study of drug-resistant lymphomas with hypermorphic mutations in PRC2 has identified a ‘methylation index’ by which cancer cells maintain optimal H3K27me3 levels for survival, emphasizing the importance of understanding how tumors adapt to changes in chromatin and to drug-resistance mutations.