Campus Directory

Pronouns he, him, his

Division Physical & Biological Sciences Division

Department/College/Unit Chemistry & Biochemistry Department

Title Assistant Professor

Affiliation Faculty

Faculty Type Research Professor

Areas of Expertise Organic Chemistry
Chemical Biology

Web Site

Primary Office Location Physical Sciences Building
362

Mail Stop Chemistry

Biography, Education and Training

BA/MA in Chemistry, Harvard College (2013)

PhD Chemistry, Stanford University (2018)

Postdoc Broad Institute of Harvard & MIT

Summary of Expertise

Organic synthesis, continuous directed evolution, enzyme biocatalysis, chemical biology

Research Interests

Enzymes perform complex and selective chemistry on all scales, assembling the molecules of life in every organism and synthesizing important small-molecule drugs in industrial reactors. My research group seeks to understand how nature catalyzes its most selective chemistry and how we can use those principles to unlock new enzymatic reactions in the laboratory. We build small-molecule biosensing circuits in E. coli to detect small-molecule ligands in high throughput, enabling continuous directed evolution of proteins that bind and transform small molecules. 

Selected Publications

• Mercer, J. A. M.*; DeCarlo, S. J.*; Roy Burman, S. S.*; Sreekanth, V.; Nelson, A. T.; Hunkeler, M.; Chen, P. J.; Donovan, K. A.; Kokkonda, P.; Tiwari, P. K.; Shoba, V. M.; Deb, A.; Choudhary, A.; Fischer, E. S.; Liu, D. R. Continuous evolution of compact protein degradation tags regulated by selective cereblon molecular glues. Science 2024, 383, eadk4422. 10.1126/science.adk4422
• Nguyen, T. M.; Sreekanth, V.; Deb, A.; Kokkonda, P.; Tiwari, P. K.; Donovan, K. A.; Shoba, V.; Chaudhary, S. K.; Mercer, J. A. M.; Lai, S.; Sadagopan, A.; Jan, M.; Fischer, E. S.; Liu, D. R.; Ebert, B. L.; Choudhary, A. Proteolysis Targeting Chimeras With Reduced Off-Targets. Nat. Chem. 2024, 16, 218–228. 10.1038/s41557-023-01379-8
• Lee, G. R.; Pellock, S. J.; Norn, C.; Tischer, D.; Dauparas, J.; Anischenko, I.; Mercer, J. A. M.; Kang, A.; Bera, A.; Nguyen, H.; Goreshnik, I.; Vafeados, D.; Roullier, N; Han, H. L.; Coventry, B.; Haddox, H. K.; Liu, D. R.; Yeh, A. H.-W.; Baker, D. Small-molecule binding and sensing with a designed protein family. Preprint 2023 10.1101/2023.11.01.565201
• Anzalone, A. V.; Gao, X. D.; Podracky, C. J.; Nelson, A. T.; Koblan, L. W.; Raguram, A.; Levy, J. M.; Mercer, J. A. M.; Liu, D. R. Programmable Deletion, Replacement, Integration and Inversion of Large DNA Sequences with Twin Prime Editing. Nat. Biotechnol. 2022, 40, 731–740. 10.1038/s41587-021-01133-w

Courses CHEM 171/271, GCH 190