Nordic Life Science 1
THE NOBEL PRIZE // CHEMISTRY “Our technologies ca
n lift people out of poverty, increase scare resources and access to them, mitigate disease and climate change. All of this can contribute to peace if we execute well.” “Bioorthogonal chemistry has found many applications in basic biomedical research, by enabling researchers to attach tiny chemical handles onto their favorite molecules, be it carbohydrates (sugars), lipids or proteins. These handles can be utilized in the living cell to attach fluorescent dyes or other kinds of probes, or to fish the tagged biomolecule out of the complex mixture of molecules within a cell,” says Simon Elsässer, Group Leader at Science for Life Laboratory and Associate Professor at the Department of Medicinal Biochemistry and Biophysics at Karolinska Institutet. He and his research colleagues are using chemical biology to probe and manipulate proteins in the living cell and bioorthogonal chemistry is their go-to technology to label proteins that cannot otherwise be labeled, for example because they are processed or modified in complex ways. “Using this technology, we have been able to visualize tiny proteins in mitochondria, study the processing of APP, a protein involved in Alzheimer’s disease, or illuminate membrane receptors,” he says. Carolyn Bertozzi’s own research group for example develops chemical tools to study the glycobiology underlying diseases such as cancer, inflammation, tuberculosis and most recently COVID-19. I fell in love with organic chemistry Bertozzi’s fascination with organic chemistry took hold when she was an undergraduate at Harvard University, she says. “I fell in love with organic chemistry when I took the course in college as a premed requirement. After that course, I changed my major to chemistry and the rest is history.” She didn’t develop career goals until she was a young adult, she says. “Growing up, I was mostly interested in sports and music as hobbies. My seriousness about a career didn’t start until I was a Ph.D. student.” Carolyn Bertozzi giving her Nobel speech at the Nobel Prize Banquet in Stocholm, December 2022. PHOTO CLÉMENT MORIN