Below is a list of my published works, which can also be found on my ORCID or Google Scholar profiles. PDF copies of these papers will be provided upon request. * denotes joint authorship.

Preprints

Alexa Giovannini, Sabrina Piechota, Maria Marchante, Kathryn S Potts, Graham Rockwell, Bruna Paulsen, Alexander D Noblett, Alexandra B Figueroa, Caroline Aschenberger, Dawn A Kelk, Marcy Forti, Shelby Marcinyshyn, Ferran Barrachina, Klaus Wiemer, Marta Sanchez, Pedro Belchin, Merrick Pierson Smela, Patrick R.J. Fortuna, Pranam Chatterjee, David H McCulloh, Daniel Ordonez-Perez, Joshua U Klein, Christian C Kramme. Improved rescue of immature oocytes obtained from conventional gonadotropin stimulation cycles via human induced pluripotent stem cell- derived ovarian support cell co-culture. bioRxiv 2023
This work was covered by STAT News.

Sabrina Piechota, Maria Marchante, Alexa Giovannini, Bruna Paulsen, Kathryn S Potts, Graham Rockwell, Caroline Aschenberger, Alexander D Noblett, Alexandra B Figueroa, Marta Sanchez, Ferran Barrachina, Klaus Wiemer, Luis Guzman, Pedro Belchin, Merrick Pierson Smela, Patrick R.J. Fortuna, Pranam Chatterjee, Nam D Tran, David H McCulloh, Silvia Ortiz, Peter Klatsky, Daniel Ordonez-Perez, Christian C Kramme. Human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived ovarian support cell co-culture improves oocyte maturation in vitro after abbreviated gonadotropin stimulation. bioRxiv 2023
This work was covered by STAT News.

Saurja DasGupta, Stephanie J. Zhang, Merrick Pierson Smela, Jack W. Szostak. RNA-catalyzed RNA Ligation within Prebiotically Plausible Model Protocells. bioRxiv 2023

Christian Kramme*, Merrick Pierson Smela*, Bennett Wolf, Patrick R. Fortuna, Garyk Brixi, Kalyan Palepu, Edward Dong, Jessica Adams, Suhaas Bhat, Sabrina Koseki, Emma Tysinger, Teodora Stan, Richie E. Kohman, Songlei Liu, Mutsumi Kobayashi, Toshi Shioda, George M. Church, Pranam Chatterjee. Efficient Human Germ Cell Specification from Stem Cells via Combinatorial Expression of Transcription Factors. bioRxiv 2022
This work was highlighted by a review in Development.

2023

Merrick Pierson Smela*, Christian Kramme*, Patrick Fortuna, Jessica L Adams, Rui Su, Edward Dong, Mutsumi Kobayashi, Garyk Brixi, Venkata Srikar Kavirayuni, Emma Tysinger, Richie E Kohman, Toshi Shioda, Pranam Chatterjee, George M Church. Directed differentiation of human iPSCs to functional ovarian granulosa-like cells via transcription factor overexpression. eLife 2023, 12 (e83291)
This work received media coverage by the Boston Globe, New Yorker, CBS, and NPR.

2021

Mandy Lynn, Merrick Pierson Smela, Thomas R Hoye. Silicon as a powerful control element in HDDA chemistry: redirection of innate cyclization preferences, functionalizable tethers, and formal bimolecular HDDA reactions. Chemical Science 2021, 12 (41)

This work was highlighted in Nature Reviews Chemistry.

Christian Kramme, Alexandru M. Plesa, Helen H. Wang, Bennett Wolf, Merrick Pierson Smela, Xiaoge Guo, Richie E Kohman, Pranam Chatterjee, George M. Church. An integrated pipeline for mammalian genetic screening. Cell Reports Methods 2021, 1 (6)

Christian Kramme, Alexandru M. Plesa, Helen H. Wang, Bennett Wolf, Merrick Pierson Smela, Xiaoge Guo, Richie E Kohman, Pranam Chatterjee, George M. Church. MegaGate: A toxin-less gateway molecular cloning tool. STAR Protocols 2021, 2 (4)

Jorge Marchand*, Merrick Pierson Smela*, Thomas Jordan, Kamesh Narasimhan, George M. Church. TBDB – A database of structurally annotated T-box riboswitch:tRNA pairs. Nucleic Acids Research 2021, 49 (D1)

2020

Anastasiya Sybirna, Walfred W.C. Tang, Merrick Pierson Smela, Sabine Dietmann, Wolfram H. Gruhn, Ran Brosh, M. Azim Surani. A critical role of PRDM14 in human primordial germ cell fate revealed by inducible degrons. Nature Communications 2020, 11 (1282)

Anthony Tabet, Thomas Gebhart, Guanglu Wu, Charlie Readman, Merrick Pierson Smela, Vijay K. Rana, Cole Baker, Harry Bulstrode, Polina Anikeeva, David H. Rowitch, Oren A. Scherman. Applying support-vector machine learning algorithms toward predicting host–guest interactions with cucurbit[7]uril. Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 2020

2019

Merrick Pierson Smela*, Anastasiya Sybirna*, Fredrick Wong, M. Azim Surani. Testing the role of SOX15 in human primordial germ cell fate. Wellcome Open Research 2019, 4 (122)

2018

Compounds and Devices Containing Such Compounds. Thomas Hoye, Feng Xu, Sean Ross, Xiao Xiao, Merrick Pierson Smela. US Patent Application on compounds for OLED active layers. Number WO2018014028.
Merrick Pierson Smela and Thomas Hoye. A Traceless Tether Strategy for Achieving Formal Intermolecular Hexadehydro-Diels–Alder Reactions. Organic Letters 2018, 20 (17), pp 5502 – 5505.