Award Address (Ronald Breslow Award for Achievement in Biomimetic Chemistry sponsored by the Ronald Breslow Award Endowment). Reinterpreting the Genetic Code: Non-Canonical Amino Acids in Protein Science and Engineering

The genetic code, elucidated in the 1960s through the work of Nirenberg, Ochoa, Khorana and their coworkers, provides a set of mol. instructions for translating nucleic acids into proteins. Through the efforts of our lab. and others, the code has been "reinterpreted" in various ways to allow the participation of an expanded set of amino acids in cellular protein synthesis. These developments have enabled powerful new approaches to protein design and to time-resolved, state-selective, and cell-selective anal. of protein synthesis in complex biol. systems.