Professor Andrew Torelli has co-authored an article entitled “Organometallic and radical intermediates reveal mechanism of diphthamide biosynthesis” in the journal Science, the world’s leading publication of scientific research. The paper outlines an ongoing effort to understand how a peculiar protein modification is formed in nature. This modification is called diphthamide, which is of great interest because it is essential for life in multi-cellular organisms, and it also happens to be the target for a toxin produced by the bacterium that causes diphtheria. The latest study achieved several lines of evidence to catch a key enzyme in the act of forming diphthamide through what turns out to be an unusual chemical mechanism.
To see the paper, please see the following link:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6381/1247/tab-pdf
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20180828142410893