Plenary Talk: Superglue from Nature

Over the past 25 years, major advances are ligation chemistries to form peptide or non-peptide bonds between molecules. These advances are enabled by the development of novel chemical ligation methods and expansion of genetic codons as well as the discovery of inteins and peptide ligases. Of particular interest to our laboratory are the discoveries of plant-derived ligases, which are superglue from nature. These ligases or superglue enable bonding between peptides, peptide-to-protein, and protein-to-protein, without protecting groups, activating agents and under aqueous conditions, and with exquisite selectivity. Here, I will present our work in ligation chemistry to enable site-specific bonding of chemicals, polymers, peptides and proteins to form new compounds under physiological conditions. In particular, I will discuss our work on the Asx-specific peptide ligases such as the butelases, which were discovered in NTU campus and which act as superglue for labeling proteins and live cells as well as precision biomanufacturing industrial enzymes and therapeutics under environmental friendly conditions.