Tricking an enzyme into making better insulin

Mary Boyajian, a junior majoring in chemical engineering at Caltech, spent her summer as a student in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) program trying to trick an enzyme. The enzyme, tRNA synthetase, has a very specific chemical target, and Boyajian wanted the enzyme to ease up a bit on its requirements so that it might also find acceptable a slightly altered version of the target. The work might sound esoteric, but it was Boyajian's piece of a project with an end goal that could benefit millions: devising a faster-acting insulin-replacement therapy for the treatment of diabetes.

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