Invited by Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (TIPC,CAS), Dr. WANG Lei from The Salk Institute visited TIPC on June, 27 and gave a lecture entitled Genetically Encoding Unnatural Amino Acids - New Opportunities for Protein-based Research, Engineering, and Therapeutics.

Proteins participate in virtually every biological process, and are becoming increasingly important for biological studies and therapeutics. Although proteins are naturally built with canonical amino acids containing limited functionalities, unnatural amino acids can now be selectively incorporated into proteins in live cells through the expansion of the genetic code. Novel chemical, physical, and biological properties can be synthesized into the unnatural amino acid, and subsequently be introduced into proteinsvia genetic incorporation. In the talk, Dr. Wang mainly presented how to harness various unnatural amino acids to enable new biological research in vivo, to engineer novel protein properties, and to develop next generation of therapeutics.