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Designed oxidase reduces oxygen to water with more than 1,000 turnovers. Active-site side chains, including a key tyrosine (mostly green) and histidine (to its left), are shown in stick representation. Credit: Courtesy of Arnab Mukherjee, Kyle D. Miner & Yi Lu

Yi Lu and international collaborators have developed artificial oxidases with high efficiency and high turnover rates for non-natural catalysts. In addition, the new catalysts generate only limited quantities of reactive oxygen species that are detrimental to biomolecules and fuel cell components. Their research furthers the understanding of natural catalysts and may help in the design of metalloproteins. C&EN article.

Jennifer Lewis has been honored for her distinguished research in directed assembly of soft functional materials by being named a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. UIUC News Bureau article.

Xiang and Lu’s antibody sandwich assay is one of two approaches they developed to allow commercial meters to quantitate proteins and other analytes.

Yi Lu and Yu Xiang improved their detectors, adding an antibody-based strategy to considerably widen the range of targets the personal glucose meters are able to detect. With support from the National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps, Lu has founded another company, GlucoSentient, that will commercialize glucose-meter-based tests for nonglucose analytes. C&EN article.

Huimin Zhao was awarded a 2012 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Zhao plans to use the award to "support ongoing efforts in developing new synthetic biology tools for discovery of novel bioactive natural products for treatment of human diseases". UIUC News Bureau article.

Illinois chemists – Wilfred van der Donk and graduate students Weixin Tan, left, and Neha Garg

Genome mining for improved analogs of the commercial food preservative nisin resulted in the discovery of geobacillin in the research group of Wilfred van der Donk. This compound is produced by a thermophilic bacterium and has better stability than nisin, which is also used to treat bovine mastitis. UIUC News Bureau article.

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