In a new paper in @Nature, an impressive and creative series of insights led @DDunkelmann and coworkers in Jason Chin’s lab to develop a powerful, general in vitro selection for aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase enzymes that charge tRNAs with a wide variety of small molecules, including those not necessarily compatible with known ribosome variants (yet). They used this system to create aaRSs that enable beta-amino acids and alpha,alpha-disubstituted amino acids to be site-specifically incorporated into proteins, solved the structure of GFP containing meta-brominated beta-phenylalanine as the third residue as confirmation, and advanced the non-canonical biopolymer field forward in the process. Wow. Brilliantly explained in the thread below. 👏👏🍻