Adam Balutowski

Program: Biochemistry Biophysics and Structural Biology

Current advisor: Timothy A. Wencewicz, PhD

Undergraduate university: University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign, 2022

Enrollment year: 2022

Research summary
My research aims to understand the mechanism, structure, and domain-domain interactions of Non-Ribosomal Peptide Synthetases (NRPS) Cy/C domins.

Non-Ribosomal Peptide Synthetases(NRPS) are a class of bacterial enzymes that synthesize key secondary metabolites involved in iron transport, cell signaling, and host survival. Synthesis of these small molecules utilizes an iterative process of adenylating substrates with ATP on NRPS A domains, followed by attachment of the substrates to phosphopantotheinylated PCP domains. These PCP domains shuttle substrates into C or Cy domains, which catalyze the condensation of substrates to form a growing molecule. The Cy domain can further cyclize the product. Products are released from the NRPS domain canonically via TE domains, usually via hydrolysis with water. While the described process applies to many NRPS products, many non-ribosomal peptides deviate from this typical pathway – in particular the branched peptide fimsbactin.

My research aims to understand the mechanism of branching in the fimsbactin NRPs, along with understanding how Cy domains interact with PCP domains. As this is a transient interaction, my research aims to synthesize novel crosslinkers to trap these domain-domain interactions. By understanding the structure and mechanism of Cy domains, we believe we will be able to engineer these domains to synthesize large compound libraries.

Graduate publications
Tranter JD, Mikami RT, Kumar A, Brown G, Abd El-Aziz TM, Zhao Y, Arullampalam P, Ashworth KJ, Jha V, Abraham N, Meyer C, Ajanel Gomez A, Xie L, Feng Y, Hong J, Zhang H, Kumari T, Balutowski A, Liu A, Bark D, Nair VK, Lasky NM, Stitziel NO, Lerner DJ, Campbell RA, Di Paola J, Cho J, Sah R. 2025 LRRC8 complexes are ATP release channels regulating platelet activation and arterial thrombosis. Blood, ():Online ahead of print. PMCID:

Tranter JD, Mikami RT, Kumar A, Brown G, Abd El-Aziz TM, Zhao Y, Arullampalam P, Ashworth K, Jha V, Abraham N, Meyer C, Ajanel A, Xie L, Feng Y, Hong J, Zhang H, Kumari T, Balutowski A, Liu A, Bark D, Nair VK, Lasky NM, Stitziel NO, Lerner DJ, Campbell RA, Di Paola J, Cho J, Sah R. 2025 LRRC8 complexes are ATP release channels that regulate platelet activation and arterial thrombosis. Blood, 146(9):1110-26. PMCID: