Débute à 
Salle M-415
2900, boul. Édouard-Montpetit , Local M-415
Montréal (QC) Canada

Titre 1 : ''Innovation by evolution: expanding the enzyme universe'' (30 mars 2017)

Titre 2: “Bringing new chemistry to life” (31 mars 2017)

Hôte : Professeur Shawn Collins

Cette conférence sera prononcée (en anglais) par la professeure Frances Arnold de la California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

Résumé :Not satisfied with nature’s vast catalytic repertoire, we want to create new enzymes and expand the space of genetically encoded chemical reactions. I will describe how we can use the most powerful biological design process, evolution, to optimize existing enzymes and invent new ones. Mimicking nature’s evolutionary tricks and using a little chemical intuition, we can generate whole new enzyme families that catalyze important reactions not (yet) known in nature, thereby adding new capabilities to the chemistry of the biological world and increasing the scope of molecules and materials we can build. I will show that heme proteins can catalyze an array of increasingly challenging carbene- and nitrene-transfer reactions and that these new activities can be enhanced by directed evolution. Unlike small-molecule catalysts described for some of these reactions, the new heme enzymes are made microbially from renewable resources, use earth-abundant iron, function in aqueous media under ambient conditions, and are highly selective.

Biographie : As Dickinson Professor at the California Institute of Technology, Frances Arnold’s research focuses on protein engineering by directed evolution, with applications in alternative energy, chemicals, and medicine. She has a BS in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University and a PhD in chemical engineering from UC Berkeley. Dr. Arnold’s honors include the Millennium Technology Prize (2016), the Eni Prize in Renewable and Nonconventional Energy (2013), the US National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2011), and the Charles Stark Draper Prize of the US National Academy of Engineering (2011). She was inducted into the US National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014 and has been elected to membership in all three US National Academies, of Science, Medicine, and Engineering. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011 and has honorary doctorates from Stockholm University, the ETH Zurich, and the University of Chicago. Arnold chairs the Advisory Panel of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowships in Science and Engineering program and serves as a judge for the Queen Elizabeth Prize in Engineering.

Arnold holds more than 50 US patents and is active in technology transfer. She is a Director of Illumina and Provivi and has served on numerous science advisory boards. She co-founded Gevo, Inc. in 2005 to make fuels and chemicals from renewable resources and Provivi, Inc. in 2013 to develop non-toxic modes of agricultural pest control.

Information supplémentaire
Brochure de la conférence

Bringing new chemistry to life
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