Publications

2026

Shi, T. Larndate, A.M. Guarnaccia, R.S. Rudraraju, A. Pal, J.C. Chang, M.B. Neiditch, M.J. Federle, J.A. Villegas*, De novo Design of a High-affinity Peptide Inhibitor of the Rgg2/3 Quorum Sensing System. Under revision. *Corresponding Author

L. Jesikiewicz, R. Marathe, B. Sepehri, R. Demissie, H. Lee, A. Veiga-Lopez*, J.A. Villegas*, High-throughput Virtual Screen of Endocrine-disrupting Chemicals Identifies Disruptors of EGFR Signaling. bioRxiv (2026) *Corresponding Author

K.M. Littlefield, M. Bellingham, R. Jagani, H. Patel, R. Lea, K.D. Sinclair, N.P. Evans, R. Auchus, J.A. Villegas, S.S. Andra, A. Veiga-Lopez, V. Padmanabhan, Maternal exposure to biosolids reshapes chemical burden and steroidogenic pathways to promote adipogenic differentiation in a sheep model. Environment International, 214, 110396 (2026)

T.T. Dean, A. Ziyad, D. Klepacki, J.A. Villegas, T.W. Moore, Molecular Determinants of Ribosome Binding for the Antimicrobial Peptide Pdi1. ACS Chem. Biol., 21, 1897–1905 (2026)

E. Livnah, O. Suss, A. Rogel, A. Gilat, Y. Abdan, J.A. Villegas, R. Gabizon, A. Nadir, Y. Shamir, N.Y. Steinman, B. Tivon, S. Albeck, T. Unger, O. Golani, I. Goliand, N. Elad, S. Carvalho, K. Shurrush, H. Barr, D. Margulies, E.D. Levy, N. London, A pharmacological modality to sequester homomeric proteins. Nat. Chem. Biol., 22, 1414–1424 (2026)

R.M. Bashatwah, L.T. Jesikiewicz, A.L. Hardy, J.A. Villegas, K. Li, B.T. Murphy, J.E. Burdette, Characterization of Isoorientin and Paeoniflorin as Botanical Glucocorticoid Receptor Modulators from White Peony and Chasteberry. Nutrients, 18, 1491 (2026)

2025

S.P. Bradley, J.M. Galván Achi, L. Cooper, M.D. Argade, H. Cheng, R. Bott, C.A. Zielinski, A.M. Gaisin, L.T. Jesikiewicz, J.A. Villegas, H. Lee, K. Ratia, N.P. Peet, L. Rong, I.N. Gaisina, Discovery and Characterization of 7,8-Dihydropyrido[4,3-d]pyrimidines as SARS-CoV-2 Entry Inhibitors. Drugs Drug Candidates, 4, 47 (2025)

2024

R. Hennessy, S.M. Creed, A.M. Gutridge, L.E. Rusali, D. Luo, B. Sepehri, E.S. Rhoda, J.A. Villegas, R.M. van Rijn, A.P. Riley, Discovery of Potent Kappa Opioid Receptor Agonists Derived from Akuammicine. J. Med. Chem., 67, 20842 (2024)

2023

B. Sepehri, K. Drew, J.A. Villegas*, Come for the atmosphere, stay for the interactions: Deciphering small molecule partitioning into biomolecular condensates. Cell Chemical Biology, 30, 1337–1339 (2023). *Corresponding Author

N. Daffern, K. Kelley, J.A. Villegas, I. Radhakrishnan, Prostaglandins as Candidate Ligands for a Per-ARNT-Sim (PAS) Domain of Steroid Receptor Coactivator 1 (SRC1). bioRxiv (2023)

T.M. Vaid, R. Demissie, Y.J. Kwon, T. Tran, H.G. Moon, J.A. Villegas, G.Y. Park, M.E. Johnson, H. Lee, Synergistic inhibition guided fragment-linking strategy and QSPR modeling to design inhalable therapeutics for asthma targeting CSF1R. ACS Omega, 8, 20505 (2023)

J.A. Villegas*, T.M. Vaid, M.E. Johnson, T.W. Moore, Mapping the Energy Landscape of PROTAC-Mediated Protein-protein Interactions. Comput. Struct. Biotechnol. J., 21, 1885–1892 (2023). *Corresponding Author

Ticiani+, J.A. Villegas+, C.A. Murga-Zamalloa, A. Veiga-Lopez, Binding sites in the epidermal growth factor receptor are responsible for bisphenol S effects on trophoblast cell invasion. Chemosphere, 318, 137960 (2023). +Equal Contribution

2022

J.A. Villegas*, M. Heidenreich, E.D. Levy*, Molecular and environmental determinants of biomolecular condensate formation. Nat. Chem. Biol., 18, 1319–1329 (2022). *Corresponding Author

J.A. Villegas*, E.D. Levy*, A Unified Statistical Potential Reveals that Amino Acid Stickiness Governs Nonspecific Recruitment of Client Proteins into Condensates. Protein Sci., 31, e4361 (2022). *Corresponding Author

J.A. Villegas+, N.J. Sinha+, N. Teramoto, C.D. Von Bargen, D.J. Pochan, J.G. Saven, Computational Design of Single-Peptide Nanocages with Nanoparticle Templating. Molecules, 27, 1237 (2022). +Equal Contribution

X. Geng, C. Wang, X. Gao, P. Chowdhury, J. Weiss, J.A. Villegas, B. Saed, T. Perera, Y.S. Hu, J.C. Reneau, M. Sverdlov, A. Wolfe, N.A. Brown, P.W. Harms, N.G. Bailey, K. Inamdar, A.C. Hristov, T. Tejasvi, J. Montes, C. Barrionuevo, L. Taxa, D.S. Casavilca-Zambrano, L.A.D. Lage, H.F. Culler, J. Pereira, J. Runge, T. Qin, L. Tsoi, H. Hong, L. Zhang, C.A. Lyssiotis, R. Ohe, T. Toubai, A. Zevallos-Morales, C. Murga-Zamalloa, R.A. Wilcox, GATA-3 is a proto-oncogene in T-cell lymphoproliferative neoplasms. Blood Cancer Journal, 12, 149 (2022)

S.D. Naidu, T. Suzuki, D. Dikovskaya, E.V. Knatko, M. Higgins, M. Sato, M. Novak, J.A. Villegas, T.W. Moore, M. Yamamoto, A.T. Dinkova-Kostova, The isoquinoline PRL-295 increases the thermostability of Keap1 and disrupts its interaction with Nrf2. iScience, 25, 103703 (2022)

2019

H. Garcia-Seisdedos+, J.A. Villegas+, E.D. Levy+, Infinite Assembly of Folded Proteins in Evolution, Disease, and Engineering. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 58, 5514–5531 (2019). +Equal Contribution

2018

K.W. Pulsipher, J.A. Bulos, J.A. Villegas, J.G. Saven, I.J. Dmochowski, Engineering a protein-protein host-guest complex: Thermostable ferritin and supercharged green fluorescent protein. Protein Sci., 27, 1755–1766 (2018)

2017

K.W. Pulsipher, J.A. Villegas, B.W. Roose, T.L. Hicks, J. Yoon, J.G. Saven, I.J. Dmochowski, Thermophilic ferritin 24mer assembly and nanoparticle encapsulation modulated by interdimer electrostatic repulsion. Biochemistry, 56, 3596–3606 (2017)

J. Ping, K.W. Pulsipher, R. Vishnubhotla, J.A. Villegas, T.L. Hicks, S. Honig, J.G. Saven, I.J. Dmochowski, A.T.C. Johnson, Structural-functional analysis of engineered protein-nanoparticle assemblies using graphene microelectrodes. Chem. Sci., 8, 5329–5334 (2017)

I. Sungwienwong, Z.M. Hostetler, R.J. Blizzard, J.J. Porter, C.M. Driggers, L.Z. Mbengi, J.A. Villegas, L.C. Speight, J.G. Saven, J.J. Perona, R.M. Kohli, R.A. Mehl, E.J. Petersson, Improving target amino acid selectivity in a permissive aminoacyl tRNA synthetase through counter-selection. Org. Biomol. Chem., 15, 3603 (2017)

2016

H.V. Zhang, F. Polzer, M.J. Haider, Y. Tian, J.A. Villegas, K.L. Kiick, D.J. Pochan, J.G. Saven, Computationally designed peptides for self-assembly of nanostructured lattices. Sci. Adv., 2, e1600307 (2016)