News & Notices
.. Prize for Young Chemists
.... 2003 winners

IUPAC Prize for Young Chemists - 2003
Honorable Mention

• Ph.D. University of California at Berkeley, Bioorganic Chemistry, May 2002
• M.S. Peking University, Physical Chemistry, July 1997
• B.S. Peking University, Organic Chemistry, July 1994
  

   

  Ph.D. Thesis

  Title Expanding the Genetic Code of Escherichia coli
  Advisers Prof. Peter G. Schultz
  Thesis Committee Prof. Jonathan A. Ellman, Department of Chemistry, University of California at Berkeley; Prof. Jasper D. Rine, Deparment of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California at Berkeley.

  Essay

  The genetic code of virtually every known organism, from bacterium to human, encodes the same twenty common amino acids. Only in rare instances, selenocysteine or pyrrolysine is used. Nonetheless, it is remarkable that polypeptides synthesized from these simple building blocks can carry out all of the complex processes of life, from photosynthesis and vision to signal transduction and the immune response. Could the genetic code be expanded to include additional amino acids? Could the properties of proteins, or possibly an entire organism, be enhanced by new amino acids with novel chemical, structural or physical properties? My dissertation focused on the development of a general strategy that makes it possible to incorporate unnatural amino acids site-specifically into proteins directly in living cells, and the application of these genetically encoded novel amino acids.

  Full text essay [pdf file - 351KB]

> Back to Prize index page

---

Page last modified 29 April 2003.
Copyright ©2003 International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.
Questions or comments about IUPAC, please contact, the Secretariat.
Questions regarding the website, please contact Web Help.