Scientists Frances Arnold, George Smith and Gregory Winter won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for research using directed evolution to produce enzymes for new chemicals and pharmaceuticals, the award-giving body said.
Scientists Frances Arnold, George Smith and Gregory Winter won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for research using directed evolution to produce enzymes for new chemicals and pharmaceuticals, the award-giving body said.
Chemistry is the third of this year's Nobels and comes after the prizes for Medicine and Physics were awarded earlier this week.
One half of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to Frances H Arnold. In 1993, she conducted the first directed evolution of enzymes, which are proteins that catalyse chemical reactions. Since then, she has refined the methods that are now routinely used to develop new catalysts. The uses of Frances Arnold’s enzymes include more environmentally friendly manufacturing of chemical substances, such as pharmaceuticals, and the production of renewable fuels for a greener transport sector.
Reel to Real link - Big Bang Theory
What’s interesting is that Frances H Arnold is from the same university, Caltech, as character Sheldon Cooper from the popular series, Big Bang Theory. He too, is a theoretical physicist at Caltech. Additionally, another character from the popular series, Leonard Hofstadter is an experimental physicist at Caltech in Pasadena. Howard Wolowitz is an aerospace engineer and former NASA astronaut who works at Caltech as well while Rajesh "Raj" Ramayan Koothrappali is an Indian-born astrophysicist who lives in Pasadena and works at Caltech too.
The other half of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry is shared by George P. Smith and Sir Gregory P. Winter. In 1985, George Smith developed an elegant method known as phage display, where a bacteriophage – a virus that infects bacteria – can be used to evolve new proteins.
George Smith was born in 1941 in Norwalk, USA and earned his Ph.D. 1970 from Harvard University. He is the Curators’ Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri.
Gregory Winter used phage display for the directed evolution of antibodies, with the aim of producing new pharmaceuticals. The first one based on this method, adalimumab, was approved in 2002 and is used for rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and inflammatory bowel diseases. Since then, phage display has produced antibodies that can neutralise toxins, counteract autoimmune diseases and cure metastatic cancer.
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