Frances Arnold pioneered directed evolution of enzymes and received half of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for that work. Her approach helped establish a practical way to improve biological catalysts by selecting useful variants rather than designing every change in advance. The hosts also discuss her engineering background as an example of a scientific career that crosses disciplines.
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5:29huge for the biomolelecular industry we've created biofuels out of this we've created agricultural chemicals we've even created a better way to produce a drug for treating type 2 diabetes So this has been around for a very long time. Actually in the 1990s there was um a professor Francis H. Arnold at Caltech. She started doing this. She's really been a pioneer of this type of directed evolution. She won the Nobel Prize in 2018 for her work. Um interesting tidbit about her undergrad at Princeton. >> Woo. Tigers. Yeah. It was an undergrad in mechanical and aerospace engineering which which I thought was interesting because from there she went and did a PhD at Berkeley in chemical engineering
6:10and then a faculty at Caltech. And I think this is just a really cool way to think about like what you do in undergrad is not like going to totally sequester you for the rest of your life. >> I think they say what past is not prologue or something. >> Yeah. I mean, she did aerospace and mechanical and now she invented directed evolution and won the Nobel Prize in 2018 in chemistry, right? So, it just shows that like in undergrad really what you're trying to do is learning how to think, >> right? And that's what's important. And then you can move on and use that skill later on to do whatever whatever you want. It's not over yet. You still have a chance. >> Exactly. Um,
Molecular BiologyProtein EngineeringSynthetic BiologyBioengineering