Researchers studying the role of proteins in health and disease use experimental tools that inactivate proteins, destroy them, or prevent them from being made in cells. In one approach, they mark targeted proteins with "destroy me" tags that work with small molecules known as molecular glues to prompt the cell's own protein-clearing machinery to gobble up the proteins. Yet, many tags used today are too large to tag the genes that encode a cell's native proteins, or they cause collateral damage, sparking destruction of proteins beyond the targeted one.