Our First Review Article Is Out!

We are excited to share our first publication, “Noncanonical Amino Acids: Bringing New-to-Nature Functionalities to Biocatalysis”, which was published in ACS Chemical Reviews last August.

In this review, we explore the growing role of noncanonical amino acids (ncAAs) in biocatalysis. We discuss how ncAAs can be used to gain deeper mechanistic insights into a wide variety of enzymes. We also highlight how incorporating ncAAs into enzymes can enhance their activity, selectivity, and stability. Another section of the review focuses on how ncAAs can be used to build more precisely designed enzymatic assemblies. Finally, we consider the exciting potential of using ncAAs to create artificial enzymes and the new possibilities this opens up for future applications.

Writing this review was a challenging yet highly rewarding experience. It deepened our understanding of the field and undoubtedly influenced the direction of our research. Collaborating with researchers from the University of Groningen also enabled us to expand our professional network and improve our cross-institutional collaboration skills.

We hope you enjoy reading the review as much as we enjoyed writing it!

Best,

Emilia & Jan Hendrik