[thread] It's finally here! We used chemical synthesis and cutting-edge cryo-EM to engineer streptogramin antibiotics that overcome an ancient resistance mechanism. The story is out today in @nature, and I'll provide a brief summary here. 1/8 Dr. Qi Li developed the route and led the chemistry team. Jenna Pellegrino and @d_john_lee in @fraser_lab pushed the limits of ribosome cryo-EM. Over a dozen other co-authors from four continents contributed. Special thanks to Daniel Blair and Marty Burke for the @NatureNews! 2/8

Campus👏parking👏should👏be👏free👏during👏a👏public👏health👏crisis. (actually, always). A short thread. @UCSF 1/6 Trainees are paying up to $300/month to park so they can do their work, much of which is COVID-related. Cannot work from home like PIs. Only other option for many people is public transportation, which has inherent risk and is running at reduced schedule. 2/6

1/ Does anybody have pro tips on navigating the #ACSFall2020 schedule? I have added a lot of the ORGN content to my schedule (which took a while), but I'm worried that I'm missing on other content and I don't have the time to click through all of these nested categories... 2/ ... in other divisions. I'm really annoyed that I cant see the speakers until you click through several levels of nested navigation. Any way to avoid this?? I lost my patience after going through one day of ORGN.

A twisting journey of stereochemical confusion, structural reassignments, and inactive "antibiotics." Read our full article on the lankacidins, out now in @J_A_C_S ! This was truly an epic journey. Way to go Lingchao, Yanmin, and Seul Ki! dx.doi.org/10.1021/jacs.0… The story starts with the structural reassignment of the only non-macrocyclic member of the class: 2,18-seco-lankacidinol B. We had to make all diastereomers of the lactone ring to find the right one! For the original story, see: dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.2….

Is chemistry authorship gender-balanced? @adamcotton92 wrote a web scraper to mine PubMed for authors' names and countries, cross-referenced with a gender API for 15 journals in the last 16 years. We just put this work on @biorxivpreprint. Thread 1/

doi.org/10.1101/2020.0… First and corresponding authors were predominantly male in all journals. First author ratios were closer to balanced than corresponding author ratios. 2/

Peaceful protests are powerful. But to say that peaceful, 'lawful' protests are the ONLY appropriate responses to the oppression and murder of black people is myopic and historically ignorant. 1/ Note how they make protests illegal when it is more convenient for them. It's as easy as implementing a curfew. Then they can use 'unlawful activity' as the justification for violence. Just like they do when they commit murder. 2/

Tweeps! Incoming rant. "Chemicals" can be very scary. You should be afraid of some chemicals. Other chemicals, like water, you should be less afraid of. But even water has an toxic dose. Terminology matters. Dose matters. I strive to be precise and not promote chemophobia 1/4 "The distinction between natural and synthetic chemicals is not merely ambiguous, it is non-existent." Check out some of the ingredients in a banana, listed in this article: aeon.co/ideas/chemopho… 2/4