⏰ Deadline approaching! The 15 March deadline for submitting abstracts for oral communications to EuroBIC18 is fast approaching! We are excited to announce an outstanding lineup of plenary and keynote speakers – check them out on our website: 🌐 eurobic18.eu

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Netherlands’ Catalysis and Chemistry Conference (NCCC), where I presented my research on photobiocatalytic atroposelective biaryl coupling. I’m excited to share that I was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry @rsc.org EES Catalysis Best Talk Prize!

📣 Thrilled to announce our incredible speaker lineup for the 2026 edition of #ETOC Online Symposium on April 29-30th.🗓️ Join us by registering today and to stay up-to-date! : tinyurl.com/ETOC2026-reg... (1/3)

🥳🥳🥳 Our study on engineering enzymes to break C–F bonds is out in @angewandtechemie.bsky.social. Congrats to the brilliant & dedicated @suzannejansen.bsky.social for taking this step toward the remediation of #PFAS & other contaminating organofluorides! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Season’s greetings from the Roelfes and Mayer groups! 🎉🎄 Warm wishes to our colleagues, collaborators, and friends across the community for a joyful holiday season and an inspiring New Year ahead. ✨🧪

Our postdoc Valeria Poggetti @valeriapoggetti.bsky.social presented her work on Nucleophilic Catalysis in Thiophenol-Based Designer Enzymes at #NWOChains @stratinghinst.bsky.social @rug.nl

Last week I have defended my PhD in the beautiful Aula of the @rug.nl with a thesis entitled "Mapping the Sequence Landscape of an Artificial Enzyme". Such a huge diploma is proportionate to the immensely beautiful experience behind a PhD in the @roelfesgroup.bsky.social. Thank you very much to all!

I am looking for a PhD student interested in enzymes! For the full annoucement: www.chemzymes.com

📢📢 New paper out! AI and networks can be used to predict distal mutations in proteins, even in artificial enzymes! Check out the article here ----‐> doi.org/10.1016/j.ij... Thread 1/5 🧵

With #PFAS and other organofluorides wreaking havoc, we set out to engineer natural defluorinases for man-made organofluorides. All credit goes to the amazing @suzannejansen.bsky.social, who has outdone herself in this project! (1/5) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Our postdoc @francdefel.bsky.social just gave a fantastic talk on gold-based artificial metalloenzymes for asymmetric catalysis. #Biotrans2025 @stratinghinst.bsky.social @rug.nl

#Biotrans2025 Gerard just gave an overview on recent advances in non-canonical amino acids application for novel artificial (metallo)enzymes from our group.

#RepArtZymes pre-conference in Basel also brought together some of our old and current group members. @zhizhou1619.bsky.social @reubenlg.bsky.social

Our group members are attending #RepArtZymes Biotrans 2025 pre-conference. Gerard just presented our work on Artificial Metalloenzymes Featuring Thiol-Based Amino Acids. Compliments to the organisers #WardGroup for the fantastic program and a great get-together of the key players in our field.

Great experience at the Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference! Amazing time around a neat program. Extremely grateful for giving me the chance to share my work in an environment that pushes towards sustainable research #GreenChemistry #MSCA @acsgci.bsky.social @roelfesgroup.bsky.social

📢📢📢 PhD Opportunity! Join our research group at RUG! We're seeking a motivated PhD student for a project on biocatalytic cascade processes combining natural and designer enzymes, supported by machine learning. Click below to learn more — and feel free to share! sites.google.com/rug.nl/roelf...

Very proud to share that one of my main PhD projects has been published in @chemicalscience.rsc.org, and that it has been selected as a #ChemSciPicks of the week paper! Keep reading below for more details, or check out the full paper for free online: doi.org/10.1039/D5SC... Thread ⬇️

Check out this week’s #ChemSciPicks from Gerard Roelfes (@roelfesgroup.bsky.social, @stratinghinst.bsky.social) et al.! ‘Genetically Encoded 3-Aminotyrosine as Catalytic Residue in a Designer Friedel-Crafts Alkylase’ Read it here for free: doi.org/10.1039/D5SC...#ChemSciPicks #ChemSky 🧪

Had an amazing week at #ACSSpring2025! It was an intense but incredibly rewarding experience with top speakers and insightful discussions. I'm grateful for the opportunity to present my research in the biocatalysis session - awesome interaction! #MSCA @roelfesgroup.bsky.social

Had an amazing week at the MetRaZymes @metrazymes.bsky.social Winter School in Hirschegg, Austria! It was a pleasure to learn, share, and connect with fellow researchers in our doctoral network. We organized and attended insightful lectures and workshops on ⬇️🧵

We are announcing about 30 PhD positions in the @fwf-at.bsky.social Cluster of Excellence Circular Bioengineering www.circularbioengineering.at/jobs 9 projects open in Progamme 2 (Self-Sustainable Microbial Systems) in 4 Austrian Universities

Huge congratulations to our former PhD student Reuben @reubenlg.bsky.social on winning the KNCV-DCS Thesis Award from the Dutch Catalysis Society for his outstanding PhD research in our group! A well-deserved recognition of his hard work and dedication. 🎉

Our group members Tanja and Franco @francdefel.bsky.social presented their exciting research at NCCC this week. Franco talked about his work on asymmetric catalysis in gold-based artificial metalloenzymes.

Our latest publication is out in @angewandtechemie.bsky.social! We generated and engineered a novel artificial metalloenzyme for the enantioselective synthesis of a panel of γ-nitro-carbonyl compounds on a preparative scale.

Grateful to be part of this awesome project lead by @brouwerb.bsky.social. Take a look to our preprint about unlocking iminium ion catalysis when using amino-tyrosine as a genetically encoded amino acid! 🤓 #MSCA @roelfesgroup.bsky.social

Check out our latest preprint, in which we demonstrate the first example of using noncanonical 3-aminotyrosine (aY) as a catalytic residue for iminium activation in a designer enzyme! Thread ⬇️

Check out our latest work where we combined mutagenesis, crystallography, and computational approaches to uncover the evolutionary specialization of a promiscuous designer enzyme. Kudos to @reubenlg.bsky.social and the entire team! Find more details in the thread below:

Fantastic start of 2025 for the group. Our own Lars Longwitz won the @unigroningen.bsky.social FSE Postdoc prize for 2024. This prize celebrates his excellence in research and great potential of becoming a scientific leader. Well well deserved Lars! 👏 @stratinghinst.bsky.social

Season's greetings from Roelfes and Mayer groups! Wishing our colleagues, collaborators, and the entire community a joyful holiday season and a prosperous New Year ahead! 🎉🎄✨🧪

We are thrilled to share our new noble-metal enzyme design approach. We used the in-vivo incorporation of a noble-metal-binding ligand for ArM design to bridge the versatility of noble metals with the catalytic power of enzymes. Thread ⬇️

We are delighted to introduce our new Boron Designer Enzyme for the kinetic resolution of α-hydroxythioesters. For this activity, the noncanonical amino acid and a natural lysine residue have to work together to form a Hybrid Catalytic Dyad!