Nobel Laureate Frances Arnold visits SciLifeLab on may 8

Frances Arnold, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018 for her work in directed evolution, making her the first American woman to ever win the prestigious prize. Now she will visit SciLifeLab to hold the seminar: Innovation by Evolution: Bringing New Chemistry to Life.

“Not satisfied with nature’s vast catalyst repertoire, I want to create new protein catalysts and expand the space of genetically encoded enzyme functions. We use the most powerful biological design process, evolution, to optimize existing enzymes and invent new ones, thereby circumventing our profound ignorance of how sequence encodes function. Using mechanistic understanding and mimicking nature’s evolutionary design processes, we have generated whole new families of ‘carbene transferases’ and ‘nitrene transferases’ that catalyze chemical reactions not previously known in biology. These capabilities increase the scope of molecules and materials we can build using synthetic biology and move us closer to a sustainable world where chemical synthesis can be fully programmed in DNA”, writes Frances, describing the seminar.

Make sure you don’t miss this opportunity – register for the event here.

There will be time to interact and discuss with Frances afterwards.

Photo: Caltech

Preliminary Program: May 8

09:00 Coffee and mingle
09:30 Welcome & introduction to topic
09:40 Frances Arnold – Innovation by Evolution: Bringing New Chemistry to Life
10:20 Questions & Discussion
10:35 Coffee and mingle