Biochemistry
Mary Engle Pennington (1872-1952)
Pennington received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1895, and was a university fellow in botany there in 1895–96. She was a fellow in physiological chemistry at Yale in 1897–99, where she did research in physiological chemistry with Mendel. In 1898, she accepted a position with the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania as Director of their Clinical Laboratory. She also served as a research worker in the department of hygiene at the University of Pennsylvania from 1898 to 1901, and was a bacteriologist with the Philadelphia Bureau of Health. In her position with the Bureau of Health, she was instrumental in improving sanitation standards for the handling of milk and milk products.
Herbert Scurlock (1875-1952)
Herbert Clay Scurlock was an American biochemist and pioneer in the application of radiation therapy for treating cancer and in the use of X-rays for dental diagnosis. From 1900 to 1905, Scurlock worked as an assistant in chemistry and lecturer in electrotherapy and X-ray at Howard University College of Medicine. He taught chemistry and physics for a brief stint, returning later to the College of Medicine as full professor of the department of physiological chemistry.
He was a member of the Medico-Chirurgical Society of the District of Columbia, of which he was its president in 1916. He was also a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the National Medical Association.
Maud Menten (1879-1960)
Maud Menten was among the first women in Canada to earn a medical doctorate. She completed her thesis work at University of Chicago. At that time women were not allowed to do research in Canada, so she decided to do research in other countries such as the United States and Germany.
In 1912 she moved to Berlin where she worked with Leonor Michaelis and co-authored their paper in Biochemische Zeitschrift which showed that the rate of an enzyme-catalyzed reaction is proportional to the amount of the enzyme-substrate complex. This relationship between reaction rate and enzyme–substrate concentration is known as the Michaelis–Menten equation. After studying with Michaelis in Germany she entered graduate school at the University of Chicago where she obtained her PhD in 1916. Her dissertation was titled "The Alkalinity of the Blood in Malignancy and Other Pathological Conditions; Together with Observations on the Relation of the Alkalinity of the Blood to Barometric Pressure".
Muriel Wheldale Onslow (1880-1932)
Muriel Onslow studied the inheritance of flower color in the common snapdragon further contributing in the concern of biochemistry pigment molecules in plants such as anthocyanins. She attended the King Edward VI High School in Birmingham and then matriculated at Newnham College, Cambridge in 1900. At Cambridge she majored in botany. She received no degree from Cambridge, despite taking First Class Honors in both parts of the Natural Sciences Tripos, because Cambridge did not award degrees to women until 1948. She later went into the genetic lab at Cambridge to focus on the inheritance of petal color in Antirrhinum (snapdragons). She later wrote her own book in 1916. She was one of the first women appointed as a lecturer at Cambridge. A play was written about her and four other biochemists.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muriel_Wheldale_Onslow
Icie Hoobler (1892-1984)
After receiving her Ph.D. from Yale, she started working at Western Pennsylvania Hospital in Pittsburgh as an assistant chemist, where she faced extreme discrimination for her gender. The hospital only had restrooms for men, and Macy had to use a restroom in a public building a half-block down the street. Due to this, she limited her trips to the bathroom and after a few months of working at the hospital she developed acute nephritis (kidney inflammation).
In 1923, at the age of 31 years and during her year of rest after developing nephritis, Macy began teaching at the University of California, Berkeley. She taught a course on food chemistry, amongst others. While teaching, she was offered the position of Director of the Nutrition Research Project of the Merril-Palmer School for Motherhood and Child Development. The project's goal was to improve knowledge and research on the health of mothers. Macy spent the next 31 years directing the laboratory and then served as a research consultant from 1954 to 1974. Under her direction, the laboratory published 300 journal articles and several books on subjects ranging from the metabolism of women during the reproductive cycle to the chemistry of the red blood cell.
Yellapragada SubbaRow (1895-1948)
The young Yellapragada SubbaRow flunked out of two high schools in India until the death of his father caused him to buckle down to his studies. He studied math, physics, and chemistry before being accepted to Madras Medical College, where he became interested in medical research. The deaths of two brothers from tropical diseases led him to narrow his field of concentration, and in 1923 he came to the U.S. and entered the Harvard School of Tropical Medicine. Since his Indian medical degree was not accepted in the United States, he earned money by working as a night porter at a Boston hospital. Afterwards at the Biochemistry department of Harvard Medical School, he co-discovered phosphocreatine and ATP with Cyrus Fiske besides devising the colorimetric method for phosphorus estimation known as the Fiske-SubbaRow Method. Joining Lederle Laboratories in 1940, he directed the research that led to the synthesis of folic acid, discovery of tetracycline the first broad-spectrum antibiotic, methotrexate the anticancer drug and diethylcarbamazine the anti-filarial drug.
Source: https://www.infoplease.com/people/yellapragada-subbarow; Image by: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/te/2/24/Yellapragada_subbarao.jpg
Gerty Theresa Cori (1896-1957)
The Cori Cycle — the process of sugar metabolism — is named after husband-and-wife team Gerty Theresa Cori and Carl Ferdinand Cori (1896-1984), the couple responsible for helping us understand how cells use food and convert it to energy through a cyclical process in the muscles. Their landmark carbohydrate research not only led to the development of treatments for diabetes, it also made them winners of the 1947 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, and Gerty the first American woman Nobel laureate in science.
Florence B. Seibert (1897-1991)
In 1924, she received the University of Chicago’s Howard Taylor Ricketts Prize for work she began at Yale and continued in Chicago. At Yale she reported a curious finding: intravenous injections often caused fever in patients. Dr. Seibert determined that the fevers were caused by toxins produced by the bacteria. The toxins were able to contaminate the distilled water when spray from the boiling water in the distillation flask reached the receiving flask. Seibert invented a new spray-catching trap to prevent contamination during the distillation process. She published her pyrogen-free process in the American Journal of Physiology. It was subsequently adopted by the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and various pharmaceutical firms. She was further recognized in 1962 with the John Elliot Memorial Award from the American Association of Blood Banks for her work on pyrogens.
She is best known for identifying the active agent in the antigen tuberculin as a protein, and subsequently for isolating a pure form of tuberculin, purified protein derivative (PPD), enabling the development and use of a reliable TB test. Seibert is a member of the U.S. National Women's Hall of Fame.
Ruby Hirose (1904-1960)
A graduate from University of Cincinnati, Dr. Ruby Hirose was a Japanese-American biochemist and bacteriologist who conducted vaccine research in infantile paralysis. A sufferer herself, Hirose also conducted research in hay fever—which is basically another way of saying “pollen allergies”. She researched a way to improve pollen extracts to desensitize hay fever sufferers.
In addition to her valuable research on the polio vaccine and on hay fever, she also published a paper titled “A Pharaceutical Study of Hydrastis Canadensis” which can be found in full here. In this paper, she chronicles the history of a native North American plant called Hydrastis Canadensis, also known as Goldenseal, and the history of its use. She chronicles how Native Americans first used this plant for dyes and as a way to treat sores and how Lewis and Clark documented this plant during their journey to the west coast. She also tried to find the best conditions in which Hydrastis would grow.
Source: https://winsatnyu.wordpress.com/2015/04/09/ruby-hirose-1904-1960/
Severo Ochoa de Albornoz (1905-1993)
In 1923, he went to the University of Madrid Medical School, where he hoped to work with Nobel laureate Santiago Ramón y Cajal, but Cajal retired. He studied with father Pedro Arrupe, and Juan Negrín was his teacher.
Negrín encouraged Ochoa and another student, José Valdecasas, to isolate creatinine from urine. The two students succeeded and also developed a method to measure small levels of muscle creatinine. Ochoa spent the summer of 1927 in Glasgow working with D. Noel Paton on creatine metabolism improving his English skills. During the summer he refined the assay procedure further and upon returning to Spain he and Valdecasas submitted a paper describing the work to the Journal of Biological Chemistry, where it was rapidly accepted [Ochoa, S., and Valdecasas, J. G. (1929) A micromethod for the estimation of total creatinine in muscle. J. Biol. Chem. 81: 351–357], marking the beginning of Ochoa's biochemistry career.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severo_Ochoa ; Image by Rodarenas - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52816701
Luis Federico Leloir (1906-1987)
Luis Federico Leloir was an Argentine physician and biochemist who received the 1970 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Although born in France, Leloir received the majority of his education at the University of Buenos Aires and was director of the private research group Fundación Instituto Campomar until his death in 1987. Although his laboratories were often plagued by lack of financial support and second-rate equipment, his research into sugar nucleotides, carbohydrate metabolism, and renal hypertension has garnered international attention and fame and has led to significant progress in understanding, diagnosing and treating the congenital disease galactosemia.
Mildren Cohn (1913-2009)
Mildren Cohn overcame gender and religious prejudice to leave a profound impact on biochemistry and biophysics. Among the first scientists to apply electron spin and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to investigate metabolism, she pioneered the use of NMR to determine how enzymes and other proteins behave during chemical reactions in the body.
In 1960, she took a position in the University of Pennsylvania’s biophysics department. She pursued research on how energy changes in cells and cellular reactions where adenosinetriphosphate (ATP) – a compound that transports chemical energy within cells for metabolism – is used, employing NMR to probe chemical structures. Her methods for looking more deeply into the structure and function of enzymes and other molecules, structures, and reactions are now widely practiced by other scientists to study metabolic processes at the molecular level.
Source: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/women-scientists/mildren-cohn.html
John E. Hodge (1914-1996)
Hodges career began as oil chemist in Topeka, Kansas at the Department of Inspections. He was also a professor of chemistry at Western University, Quindaro, KS. In 1941 he began nearly 40 years of service at the USDA Nonhem Regional Research Center in Peoria, IL; where he retired in 1980. During that time (1972) he was visiting professor of chemistry at the University of Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil. He also received a Superior Service Award at Washington, D.C., from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1953, and two research team awards also. He was chairman of the Division of Carbohydrate Chemistry of the American Chemical Society in 1964, and was an active member of the cereal chemists and other scientific organizations.
Hodge encouraged young black college students to study chemistry. He made tours of historically Black colleges in the South to assess their laboratory capabilities, and recruited summer interns for research experiences.
Source: https://aaregistry.org/story/john-e-lodge-chemist-born/
Herman R. Branson (1914-1995)
The Pauling-Branson Award recognizes the contributions of Herman Russell Branson, (1914-1995), one of the first African American physicists to make crystallography the focus of his research. Branson was born in Pocahontas, VA and received his BS from Virginia State College in 1936, and his PhD in physics in 1939 from the University of Cincinnati, under the direction of Boris Padowski. After a stint at Dillard University, he joined Howard University in 1941 as an assistant professor of physics and chemistry. He remained at Howard for 27 years, achieving increasingly important positions. He chaired the Department of Physics, directed a program in experimental science and mathematics, and worked on Office of Naval Research and Atomic Energy Commission projects in physics while at Howard University.
In 1948, Branson took a leave and spent time in Linus Pauling’s lab at Caltech. There he was assigned work on the structure of proteins; specifically he used his mathematical abilities to determine possible helical structures that would fit both the available x-ray data and a set of chemical restrictions outlined by Pauling. After some months Branson handed in a report narrowing the possible structures to two helices, a tighter coil Pauling termed alpha, and a looser helix called gamma. As a scientist, Branson made significant contributions to how proteins work, and how they contribute to diseases such as sickle cell anemia.
Source: https://history.amercrystalassn.org/h-branson; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Branson
Gertrude B. Elion (1918-1999)
Gertrude Belle Elion was an American biochemist and pharmacologist, who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with George H. Hitchings and Sir James Black. Working alone as well as with Hitchings and Black, Elion developed a multitude of new drugs, using innovative research methods that would later lead to the development of the AIDS drug AZT. She developed the first immunosuppressive drug, azathioprine, used for organ transplants. She also developed the first successful antiviral drug, acyclovir (ACV), for the treatment of Herpes infection.
John Cornforth (1918-2013)
Sir John Warcup Cornforth Jr., was an Australian–British chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1975 for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalysed reactions, becoming the only Nobel laureate born in New South Wales. At about 10 years old, Cornforth had noted signs of deafness, which led to a diagnosis of otosclerosis, a disease of the middle ear which causes progressive hearing loss. This left him completely deaf by the age of 20 but also fatefully influenced his career direction towards chemistry.
Cornforth investigated enzymes that catalyse changes in organic compounds, the substrates, by taking the place of hydrogen atoms in a substrate's chains and rings. In his syntheses and descriptions of the structure of various terpenes, olefins, and steroids, Cornforth determined specifically which cluster of hydrogen atoms in a substrate were replaced by an enzyme to effect a given change in the substrate, allowing him to detail the biosynthesis of cholesterol.
Carl Fraction (1919-2000)
Carl Harrison Fraction was born in St. Paul, MN, to James and Opal Fraction, one of six siblings. When he was young, the family moved to Iowa. Carl graduated from Des Moines North High School in 1937, where he played in the high school band. Fraction enlisted in the Air Force and was discharged in 1945, but he later contracted tuberculosis. While in the Air Force, he learned photography. He enrolled at Macalester College in St. Paul, and graduated in 1958 with a degree in microbiology.
Gillette Corporation hired him soon after he graduated to work in its chemistry department. Gillette was the mother company to many hair care products including Toni products. Fraction's chemical formulation was the base for the hair gel “Dippity Dew.”
Source: https://aaregistry.org/story/carl-fraction-a-minnesota-chemist/
Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958)
Rosalind Elsie Franklin was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer who made contributions to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, coal, and graphite. Although her works on coal and viruses were appreciated in her lifetime, her contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA were largely recognized posthumously.
Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA, particularly Photo 51, while at King's College, London, which led to the discovery of the DNA double helix for which James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Watson suggested that Franklin would have ideally been awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Wilkins, but the Nobel Committee does not make posthumous nominations.
After finishing her work on DNA, Franklin led pioneering work at Birkbeck on the molecular structures of viruses. Her team member Aaron Klug continued her research, winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1982.
Otto Gottlieb (1920-2011)
Dr. Gottleib developed the biochemical systematics of plants, also called chemosystematics or chemical taxonomy revealing the biodiversity of Brazilian flora and promoting phytochemical development in the country. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1999 for studies on the chemical structure of plants, which allow us to analyze the state of preservation of several ecosystems.
Source: https://twitter.com/LatinXChem/status/1278733917365784577, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Gottlieb
Marie Maynard Daly (1921-2003)
Marie Maynard Daly is the first African American woman to receive a doctoral degree — earning it from Columbia University in 1947. Prior to that, she attended Queens College in Flushing, New York, where she graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry. After receiving her Ph.D., she held an instructor position at Howard University for two years and began research on the composition and metabolism of components in the cell nucleus. Later in her career, Daly developed programs to increase the number of minorities in medical schools and graduate science programs. In 1988, she established a scholarship fund at Queens College for African Americans in commemoration of her father
Source: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/african-americans-in-sciences/marie-maynard-daly.html; https://aaregistry.org/story/marie-m-daly-biochemist-born/; https://cen.acs.org/people/profiles/Six-black-chemists-should-know/97/web/2019/02
Rosalyn Sussman Yalow (1921-2011)
Rosalyn Sussman Yalow was an American medical physicist, and a co-winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (together with Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally) for development of the radioimmunoassay (RIA) technique. She was the second American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
After graduating, Yalow joined the Bronx Veterans Administration Medical Center to help set up its radioisotope service. There she collaborated with Solomon Berson to develop radioimmunoassay (RIA). RIA is a radioisotope tracing technique that allows the measurement of tiny quantities of various biological substances in human blood as well as a multitude of other aqueous fluids. Originally used to study insulin levels in diabetes mellitus, the technique has since been applied to hundreds of other substances – including hormones, vitamins and enzymes – all too small to detect previously. Despite its huge commercial potential, Yalow and Berson refused to patent the method.
Har Gobind Khorana (1922-2011)
Har Gobind Khorana grew up as a member of one of the few literate families in his tiny village. His father insisted upon educating his children, and Khorana eventually earned an M.S. from Punjab University and his Ph.D. from the University of Liverpool in England. In 1952 he traveled to Vancouver, British Columbia, where he began working on nucleic acids. Eight years later he moved on to the Institute for Enzyme Research at the University of Wisconsin before finally settling, in 1970, as the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Biology and Chemistry at M.I.T. Khorana, Robert Holley, and Marshall Nirenberg received the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis.” Khorana's role was to devise the methods that led to the synthesis of well-defined nucleic acids, ultimately leading to the solution of the genetic code.
Source: https://www.infoplease.com/people/har-gobind-khorana; Image by http://history.nih.gov/exhibits/nirenberg/HS7_nobel.htm
Alejandro Zaffaroni (1923-2014)
Serial entrepreneur who was responsible for founding several biotechnology companies in Silicon Valley. Among the contributions that he was involved in developing include the birth control pill, the nicotine patch, corticosteroids, and the DNA microarray. He was awarded the 1995 National Medal of Technology, 2004 Winthrop-Sears Medal, and the 2006 Biotechnology Heritage Award.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_Zaffaroni; https://twitter.com/LatinXChem/status/1283071392812949505
Johanna Liesbeth Kubelka Döbereiner (1924-2000)
Pioneer in soil biology and studies related to nitrogen-fixing bacterial species. Her early work includes studies of Azospirillum and other bacteria that could be useful to Brazilian soil. She later played an important role in Brazil's soybean production by encouraging a reliance on varieties that solely depended on biological nitrogen fixation. As a consequence of her research and ideas, numerous soybean plantations in Brazil are now completely supplied for nitrogen (N) by rhizobia and not using any N-fertilizers. This movement has had big benefits, because Brazil, together with the U.S., are the main producers of soybean in the world (ca. 50% world production). Considering that soybeans are one of the most important global sources of protein (mainly fed to animals that in turn becomes animal protein for human consumption), this implies that significant amount of global protein comes from an ecological biological process without the use of industrial chemical fertilizers. She was nominated for the Noble Prize in Chemistry in 1997.
Source: https://twitter.com/LatinXChem/status/1276558097012555776, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johanna_D%C3%B6bereiner
Emmett W. Chappelle (b. 1925)
Emmett Chappelle is a scientist and researcher who made valuable contributions in several fields, including medicine, biology, food science, and astro-chemistry. Chappelle is the recipient of 14 U.S. patents and was recently recognized as one of the 100 most distinguished African American scientists and engineers of the 20th Century.
In 1966, he joined the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, as a research chemist, and later became a remote sensing scientist, studying natural systems to improve environmental management. Chappelle retired from NASA in 2001.
Source: http://www.myblackhistory.net/Emmett_Chappelle.htm; https://aaregistry.org/story/emmett-chappelle-biochemist-in-space-laboratories/
César Milstein (1927-2002)
Nobel Prize winning biochemist César Milstein opened new doors in the diagnosis and treatment of disease with his 1975 study on monoclonal antibodies. Milstein and his team developed a technique for the unlimited production of monoclonal antibodies, a type of antibody made by identical immune cells. Thanks to Milstein’s work, monoclonal antibodies are now used in everything from diagnostic tests to the treatments of several autoimmune diseases.
Source: http://mentalfloss.com/article/86985/10-game-changing-hispanic-scientists-you-didnt-learn-about-school; Image by https://www.visionlearning.com/en/library/Inside-Science/58/C%C3%A9sar-Milstein/220
Ida S. Owens (b. 1929)
Ida was born in Newark, and received a Ph.D. in Biology-Physiology from Duke University in 1967. At the National Institutes of Health (NIH), biochemist Dr. Owens conducted studies in the genetics of detoxification enzymes. This research was aimed at shedding light on how the human body defends itself against poison.
Owens is currently with the Section of Genetic Disorders of Drug Metabolism, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, MD.
Source: https://aaregistry.org/story/ida-owens-a-remakable-biochemist/
Bruce Voeller (1934-1994)
A prominent figure in the struggle against the AIDS epidemic, Bruce Voeller was a scientist and activist whose work helped prevent transmission of HIV and advance gay rights. In fact, he coined the term acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) as a replacement for the inaccurate and stigmatizing moniker gay-related immune deficiency disorder.
Voeller was born in 1934 in Minneapolis and grew up in the small town of Roseburg, Oregon. He excelled in his undergraduate studies at Reed College and earned his PhD in developmental biology, biochemistry, and genetics from Rockefeller University in 1961. After graduating, he stayed on as a research associate at Rockefeller. According to an obituary published at the time of his death in the Journal of Sex Research, Voeller was the youngest person to be promoted to associate professor at the university.
Source: https://cen.acs.org/people/lgbtq-scientist-chemist-history/99/web/2021/06?utm_source=Essential https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Voeller
F. Ann Walker (d. 2022)
Walker was born in Ohio and grew up there, graduating from Adena High School in 1958. Walker has a B.A. in chemistry from College of Wooster (1962). In 1966 she earned her Ph.D. in chemistry from Brown University. From 1967 until 1970 she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles and an assistant professor at Ithaca College. She then moved to San Francisco State University where she was promoted to professor in 1976. Subsequently, she moved to the University of Arizona where she was named Regents Professor in 2001, and then she retired in 2013.
Walker's research centered on bio-inorganic chemistry, especially heme protein chemistry. Walker examined proteins in bloodsucking insects and cytochromes that transfer energy between cells. Walker's early work was on porphyrins and their complexation with iron. She was able to obtain structural information about metal binding proteins. A portion of her work relied on nuclear magnetic resonance, especially paramagnetic nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which she used to examine model heme and systems with proteins coupled to heme.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Ann_Walker; https://twitter.com/elisatomat/status/1488705311061917696
Maria C. Linder (1939-2022)
Linder, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, was an active faculty member who continued to spend time in the lab focusing on research that examines how copper and iron function in the body. Her work also has contributed to a greater understanding of cancer.
Linder joined CSUF in 1977 after her husband’s job relocation to the Los Angeles area, and following a teaching and research stint as an associate professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She grew up in New York City, earned a bachelor’s degree from Vassar College and a doctorate in biochemistry from Harvard University.
During her long-lasting academic career, Linder published more than 100 scholarly articles — many with her students — authored books, garnered more than $12 million in research grants, and earned awards and praise for her research and teaching. But her greatest contribution and point of pride was nurturing and educating generations of future biochemists.
Source: https://news.fullerton.edu/2017/04/maria-linder-award/; https://news.fullerton.edu/2022/09/in-memoriam-maria-c-linder/
Judith Klinman (b. 1941)
Judith P. Klinman is an American chemist known for her work on enzyme catalysis. She earned her A.B. from University of Pennsylvania in 1962 and Ph.D. from the same university in 1966. In 1978 she was the first female faculty member in the physical sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. Her group has discovered that room temperature nuclear tunneling occurs among various enzymatic reactions, and clarified the dynamics of tunneling process through data analysis. They have also discovered the quino-enzymes.
Jean Thomas (b. 1942)
In early studies, Jean Thomas identified the way in which histones — the basic proteins in the nucleus of all eukaryotes — are associated with each other, which underpinned the nucleosome model proposed by Roger D. Kornberg for the structure of chromatin, the form in which DNA is universally packaged with histones.
The focus of much of her subsequent work has been on proteins involved in stabilisation (linker histone H1, heterochromatin protein 1) or destabilisation (HMGB1) of the folded nucleosome filament, which affect the accessibility or otherwise of genes for transcription. Recent nuclear magnetic resonance studies of HMGB1 have revealed how intramolecular interactions regulate its function and, in particular, the availability of its acidic tail and HMG boxes for interaction with histones and DNA, respectively, in chromatin.
Jean received a CBE in 1993 for services to science and a DBE in 2005 for services to biochemistry. In 2014, she was elected President of the Society of Biology, having served previously, inter alia, as President of the Biochemical Society and a Governor of the Wellcome Trust.
JoAnne Stubbe (b. 1946)
JoAnne Stubbe is an American chemist best known for her work on ribonucleotide reductases, for which she was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2009. She currently is the Novartis Professor of Chemistry & Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. JoAnne has published over eighty scientific papers and has been frequently recognized for her research achievements. Before JoAnne Stubbe’s work, there were no chemical mechanisms that could be written for certain enzymes. She revolutionized the biochemistry field with her first two scientific papers on enzymes enolase and pyruvate kinase. She has been active on several committees, including review boards for the NIH grants committee and the editorial boards for various scientific journals.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JoAnne_Stubbe; Image by: https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/24706/title/Making-Life-Possible/
Edward M. De Robertis (b. 1947)
Edward Michael De Robertis is an American embryologist and Professor at University of California, Los Angeles, whose work has contributed to the discovery of conserved molecular mechanisms of embryonic inductions that cause tissue differentiations during animal development.
Edward De Robertis (a.k.a. Eddy) was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts while his father, Eduardo de Robertis, was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT. He was raised in Uruguay since age three, where he completed MD studies by age 24. This was followed by a Ph.D. in Chemistry at the Leloir Institute in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
In summary, Eddy De Robertis has been a pioneer in the remarkable current realization that the development of all animals is regulated by an ancestral genetic tool-kit. This use of conserved gene networks during embryonic development has channeled the outcomes of evolution by natural selection arising from Urbilateria,the last common ancestor of vertebrates and invertebrates.
Roger Y. Tsien (1952-2016)
Roger Yonchien Tsien was an American biochemist. He was a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego and was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, in collaboration with organic chemist Osamu Shimomura and neurobiologist Martin Chalfie.
Tsien was a pioneer of calcium imaging and known for developing various dyes which become fluorescent in the presence of particular ions such as calcium. One such dye, Fura-2, is widely used to track the movement of calcium within cells. Indo-1, another popular calcium indicator, was also developed by Tsien's group in 1985. He has also developed fluorescent indicators for other ions such as magnesium, zinc, copper, iron, lead, cadmium, aluminum, nickel, cobalt, and mercury.
Mary Jo Ondrechen (b. 1953)
Her current research activities include modeling of biological macromolecules and predictive calculations for functional genomics. She co-developed THEMATICS (Theoretical Microscopic Anomalous Titration Curve Shapes), a simple computational predictor of functional information about proteins from their three-dimensional structure alone. THEMATICS predicts catalytic and binding sites in proteins with high sensitivity and good selectivity. A unique and powerful feature of her THEMATICS method is that it requires neither sequence nor structural comparisons and hence applies to novel folds, orphan sequences, and also to engineered polypeptide systems.
She is also the co-developer of a novel machine learning technology called Partial Order Optimum Likelihood (POOL). POOL is a monotonicity-constrained maximum likelihood method for the prediction of properties that depend monotonically on the input features. This powerful method, coupled with THEMATICS input features, is a top-performing active site predictor for protein structures.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Jo_Ondrechen; Image by http://www.bioe.neu.edu/people/ondrechen-mary-jo
Ben Barres (1954-2017)
Ben Barres, the first openly transgender member of the US National Academy of Sciences, is remembered not just for his groundbreaking work on glial cells in the brain but also as a champion for women in science.
Barres was born Sept. 13, 1954, in West Orange, New Jersey, and assigned female at birth. His interest in science developed while he was in school, but because he presented as a girl, he was discouraged from taking math and science courses. Despite this, he earned a place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and went on to Dartmouth Medical School for his medical degree.
In the early 1980s, while Barres was doing his neurology residency, glial cells in the brain caught his attention. Glial cells had previously been thought of simply as the brain’s biological glue, but Barres showed they play an active role in brain function. His work changed the way we understand the cells’ interactions with neurons.
Source: https://cen.acs.org/people/lgbtq-scientist-chemist-history/99/web/2021/06?utm_source=Essential; https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-08964-1
Donna Blackmond (b. 1958)
Donna Blackmond, Ph.D., is an American chemical engineer and the John C. Martin Endowed Chair in Chemistry at Scripps Research in La Jolla, CA. Her research focuses on prebiotic chemistry, the origin of biological homochirality, and kinetics and mechanisms of asymmetric catalytic reactions. Notable works include the development of Reaction Progress Kinetic Analysis (RPKA), analysis of non-linear effects of catalyst enantiopurity, biological homochirality and amino acid behavior
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Blackmond; https://www.scripps.edu/faculty/blackmond/
Nancy L. Allbritton
Nancy Allbritton, MD, PhD is a Kenan Professor and Chair in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University. She is best known for her work in single-cell analysis. Nancy studied at Johns Hopkins University for a M.D in medicine and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a Ph.D in medical engineering in the 1980s.
Research program in the Allbritton lab is a multidisciplinary effort that brings to bear principles and techniques from chemistry, physics, engineering, and materials science to develop new assays and technologies for biomedical applications. The ongoing work in the lab comprises three major focus areas: 1) analytical techniques for single-cell biochemical assays, 2) microfabricated platforms for sorting and cloning cells, and 3) microengineered systems for recapitulating organ level function. Many of the lab's projects and extensive collaborations within these focus areas involve the development and application of new technologies for oncology and stem cell research.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Allbritton; https://www.med.unc.edu/pharm/people/joint-faculty/nancy-l-allbritton
Jennifer Doudna (b. 1964)
Doudna has been a leading figure in what is referred to as the "CRISPR revolution" for her fundamental work and leadership in developing CRISPR-mediated genome editing. In 2012, Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier were the first to propose that CRISPR/Cas9 (enzymes from bacteria that control microbial immunity) could be used for programmable editing of genomes, which is now considered one of the most significant discoveries in the history of biology.
In 2015, Doudna gave a TED Talk about the bioethics of using CRISPR. As CRISPR becomes increasingly used to edit multicellular organisms, Doudna continues to be called upon to speak clearly about the ethics of changing an organism's function using CRISPR. Their discovery has since been further developed by many research groups for applications ranging from fundamental cell biology, plant, and animal research to treatments for diseases including sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, Huntington's disease, and HIV.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Doudna; https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i17/CRISPR-pioneer-Jennifer-Doudna-shares-her-outlook-for-the-groundbreaking-gene-editing-tool.html
Squire Booker (b. 1965)
Squire Booker is an American biochemist at Penn State University. He is an associate editor for the American Chemical Society Biochemistry Journal, is a Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and an Eberly Distinguished Chair in Science at Penn State University.
His research explores how enzymes change their catalytic abilities due to metal ions or metal clusters. His research focuses on enzymes containing iron-sulfur clusters which catalyze chemical reactions. He focuses on the Radical S-adenosylamethionine Superfamily (SAM) which is a group of enzymes that encounters radical chemistry in post-transcriptional and post-translational modifications of DNA.
Carolyn R. Bertozzi (b. 1966)
Bertozzi studies the glycobiology underlying diseases such as cancer, inflammatory disorders such as arthritis, and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis. In particular, Bertozzi has advanced understanding of cell surface oligosaccharides involved in cell recognition and inter-cellular communication. Bertozzi is credited for developing the field of bioorthogonal chemistry which employs a bioorthogonal chemical reporters, such as the azide to label biomolecules within living systems. Her lab has also developed tools for research, including chemical tools for studying glycans in living systems and more recently nanotechnologies for probing biological systems.
In addition to her academic work, Bertozzi works actively with biotechnology start-ups. She has served on the research advisory board of GlaxoSmithKline, and has a startup of her own, Redwood Bioscience of Emeryville, California. Several of the technologies developed in her lab have been adapted for commercial use. She is also openly lesbian, one of the rare openly LGBT scientists.
Margarita Behrens
She is currently an associate professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies where her lab studies the impact of oxidative stress on the post-natal brain through probing the biology of fast-spiking parvalbumin interneurons in models of schizophrenia.
In 2018, the Salk Institute appointed Behrens as Research Professor, where she remains the first and only faculty member to hold this title.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarita_Behrens; https://twitter.com/LatinXChem/status/1281635526135566342
Beatriz Álvarez Sanna (b. 1968)
Professor at the Faculty of Sciences at the Universidad de la República. She is performing research in the fields of redox biochemistry and enzymology, in particular biological thiols and their role in hypertension, diabetes, and inflammation. She received the 2013 Women's in Science L'Oréal-UNESCO Award.
Source: https://twitter.com/LatinXChem/status/1286706002537197568
S. Patricia Becerra
Dr. Becerra is a Principal Investigator at the National Eye Institute (National Institutes of Health), where she researches protein structure and function, as well as the biochemistry of PEDF, a neurotrophic and antiangiogenic factor for the retina. She investigates protein structure and function in relation to drug development for combating blindness.
Source: https://twitter.com/LatinXChem/status/1283485458421313536 , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._Patricia_Becerra
Jorge Z. Torres
Dr. Torres received his B.S. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1998, where he conducted research under the mentorship of Dr. Eduardo Orias. He obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University in 2004 under the direction of Dr. Virginia A. Zakian. He conducted his postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Dr. Peter K. Jackson at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Genentech Inc. until 2009 when he joined the faculty in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA.
The lab's major focus is to understand how multiple mechanisms and enzymatic activities coordinate the formation of the mitotic microtubule spindle during cell division. We are interested in identifying and characterizing novel proteins that are required for proper mitotic spindle assembly. Among these are molecular motors, phosphatases, methyltranferases, and ubiquitin ligases. We use human cell lines and in vitro systems along with a combination of approaches, including biochemistry, molecular biology, cell biology, chemical biology, and microscopy to determine the mechanism of action of these proteins.
Source: https://www.chemistry.ucla.edu/directory/torres-jorge-z
David R. Liu (b. 1973)
David R. Liu is an inventor on a winning streak. As a young chemist, he quickly mastered techniques for studying life’s most complex molecules and then turned to altering the building blocks of life itself. He repurposed the genetic code of DNA to create large libraries of small molecules for drug screening and created a system for engineering new proteins that’s at least 100 times as fast as previous methods.
Most recently, Liu is leading the charge in conceiving improved versions of CRISPR, the gene-editing tool that is revolutionizing research. His most notable advance is a new “base editor” that can swap a single nucleotide base, or letter, of DNA for another. The invention opens the door to developing treatments for the thousands of genetic diseases caused by one small typo in DNA.
And Liu’s discoveries aren’t just academic curiosities. He has founded five companies, each based on a potentially transformative technology, a breadth of innovation that is typically reserved for engineers. They are calculated risks: Two of his ventures have failed, but the others seem poised to succeed.
Source: https://cen.acs.org/biological-chemistry/biotechnology/Inventor-chemist-CRISPR-craftsman-Inside/96/i16 Image by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_R._Liu
Michelle Chang (b. 1977)
Michelle C. Chang earned a B.Sc. in Biochemistry and in French Literature at the University of California in San Diego. This was followed by research as a National Science Foundation Predoctoral Fellow and as a M.I.T./Merck Foundation Predoctoral Fellow. In 2004, she obtained her Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Professor JoAnne Stubbe and Professor Daniel G. Nocera.
After a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, she joined the faculty where she is currently working as an Associate Professor at the Department of Chemistry.
Michelle’s team uses the approaches of mechanistic biochemistry, molecular and cell biology, metabolic engineering, and synthetic biology to address problems in energy and human health. Her group designs and creates new biosynthetic pathways in microbial hosts for in vivo production of biofuels from abundant crop feedstocks and pharmaceuticals from natural products or natural product scaffolds.
Source: http://blogs.rsc.org/sc/2017/01/25/michelle-chang-chemical-science-associate-editor/
Michelle M. Martínez Montemayor
I am Puerto Rican, my primary education and part of my graduate studies were completed in Puerto Rico and my doctoral education was obtained in the United States studying the effects of high mineral content diets on differential gene expression in swine. I chose this scientific path after not being accepted into veterinary school. It turns out that I really love research, and a as a result, three publications from my doctoral work were published in renowned scientific journals.
I direct a research program focused on studying etiology and progression of disease at the molecular level, and on development of therapeutics using natural products. My lab works on translational regulation in cancer, modulation of inflammatory processes, synergism of natural compounds and conventional therapeutics, characterization of potential compounds derived from natural products, and the effects of natural therapies on cancer stem cells.
Sources: https://www.uccaribe.edu/research10/researchers/researchers-cellular-and-molecular-biology/michelle-m-martinez-montemayor/; https://www.1mwis.com/profiles/Michelle-Mart%C3%ADnez-Montemayor
Kelly Chacón
Kelly studies how metal ions are trafficked in the cell by using a mixture of biochemistry and spectroscopy. Her lab is particularly interested in catching the physical act of metal ion transfer from one metalloprotein to another, as well as characterizing newly discovered metalloproteins. This work heavily relies upon bi-yearly lab trips to a number of synchrotron lightsources. Chacón describes themself as “very nontraditional—in a lot of senses of the word.” A desire for independence led them to drop out of high school at age 15. They worked in food service for a number of years before—and while—getting their GED. A high score on the GED exam pushed them to attend community college and, later, to transfer to Portland State University, where they got their first taste of chemistry. That same independent streak drew Chacón to academia. They liked the idea that “you could kind of work for yourself,” they say. Chacón started working at Reed College in 2015—straight out of their PhD at Oregon Health and Science University.
Sources: https://www.reed.edu/faculty-profiles/profiles/chacon-kelly.html; https://cen.acs.org/articles/100/i12/Kelly-N-Chacon-characterizes-enzymes-that-break-down-toxic-metals.html
Karin Chumbimuni Torres
Dr. Karin Y. Chumbimuni-Torres is an Assistant Professor in the Chemistry Department at University of Central Florida (UCF). A native of Peru, she earned her Master’s and Doctoral degrees at University of Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil. During her graduate studies she spent seven months at Auburn University in Alabama. After graduating, she worked at Purdue University for two years as a postdoctoral researcher developing ultrasensitive ion-based polymeric sensors. During that time, she also spent five months at the Biodesing Institute at Arizona State University. After Purdue, she worked at University of California in San Diego for two years, where she developed novel sensors for applications in nanomaterial-based bioanalysis of proteins, DNA, and bacteria among other analytes. Before moving to UCF, she was a research associated at University of Texas at San Antonio and studied adsorption of proteins to poly(dimethylsiloxane) surfaces and its effect on the adhesion of cells.
Currently, Dr. Chumbimuni-Torres’s research interests focus on the understanding, characterization, and development of chemical sensors for biological applications. Analytes of interest are biological ions as well as biomolecules such as microRNAs, RNA, and DNA. In this direction, her lab’s aim is to integrate ultra-sensitive polymeric-based sensors into microchip platforms. Her group is also interested in studying the interactions at the interface of biomolecules and nanomaterials, the synthesis of nanoparticles and nanostructures, and the development of biocompatible materials for analytical devices. Her lab’s research interests have been extended to optical sensors where they use photoactive compounds to create sensors with the capability to be controlled using visible light for biomedical applications.
Sources: https://sciences.ucf.edu/chemistry/person/karin-chumbimuni-torres/; https://sciences.ucf.edu/chemistry/nbel/
Nicole Gaudelli
By the time Gaudelli joined Harvard University chemist David Liu's lab as a postdoctoral researcher in 2014, she had published only two scientific papers, but it didn't take long before she invented a tool that could someday treat hundreds, even thousands of diseases.
Soon after Gaudelli arrived, another postdoc, named Alexis Komor, joined the Liu lab with plans to invent a new version of the gene-editing tool CRISPR. The original CRISPR system simply cuts DNA like a pair of scissors, allowing researchers to turn off an errant gene. Komor's so-called base editor worked more like an eraser and pencil, changing a single letter of DNA to another—a cytidine (C) to a thymidine (T).
While assisting Komor with the experiment, Gaudelli began planning a second base editor to swap DNA's other two letters, adenosine (A) and guanosine (G).
Gaudelli's proposed adenine base editor could theoretically fix nearly 50% of the single-letter DNA mutations known to cause disease in humans, accounting for thousands of genetic diseases. Gaudelli was successful. She spent an additional year refining the base editor before publishing the results. Then Harvard licensed the base editors to a new biotech start-up called Beam Therapeutics, which Liu cofounded.
Source: https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/rare-disease/Nicole-Gaudelli/96/i33
Jose Rodriguez
As a professor at UCLA, Rodriguez is using a relatively new structural biology technique to investigate proteins that clump together. These aggregating proteins are associated with diseases such as Alzheimer’s, and the UCLA scientist hopes that understanding their atomic-level details will pave the way to treatments.
As an independent researcher, Rodriguez is studying prions, the infectious proteins responsible for diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow disease. He hopes his structural insights could help explain prion mysteries such as how healthy proteins get converted into infectious ones that aggregate.
Source: https://cen.acs.org/analytical-chemistry/structural-biology/Jose-Rodriguez/96/i33