Designer enzymes

Development of small designer aldolase enzymes: catalytic activity, folding, and substrate specificity.

Small (24-35 amino acid residues) peptides that catalyze carbon-carbon bond transformations including aldol, retro-aldol, and Michael reactions in aqueous buffer via an enamine mechanism have been developed. Peptide phage libraries were created by appending six randomized amino acid residues to the C-terminus or to the N-terminus of an 18-mer alpha-helix peptide containing lysine residues. Reac...

‘Designer’ babies

The remaining hurdle to the creation of babies specifically to save the life of an ailing brother or sister was removed in Britain last month by the fertility regulatory body to the delight of afflicted families and alarm of those who fear the advent of a 'designer' baby age. The decision of the UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority gives new hope to the parents of a two-year-old bo...

Designer Manual

Designer Children:

Designer Drug Detective Work

O n an unseasonably warm spring morning in his office in Baltimore, neurochemist Michael H. Baumann eagerly flipped through a spreadsheet. It listed hundreds of chemical names of suspected drugs seized by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies over the past three years. " When police bust people with some white powder or a baggie full of pot-looking material, it gets sent to forensi...