News Release

Welch Award honors 2 for unlocking nature's secrets

Grant and Award Announcement

The Welch Foundation

Battersby, Scott share $300,000 prize for lifetime contributions to biosynthesis

HOUSTON * May 31, 2000 * From the yeasts used since ancient times for baking bread and making wine to modern-day drugs like taxol extracted from Pacific Yew trees to treat breast and ovarian cancer, nature has served as a rich source of products that improve human life. Today, thanks to the pioneering research of the 2000 Welch Award co-recipients, we are closer to understanding how nature makes these products and being able to re-create that work in the test tube.

Sir Alan R. Battersby, Emeritus Professor of Organic Chemistry, University of Cambridge, and A. Ian Scott, Davidson Professor of Science and Director of the Center for Biological NMR, Texas A&M University, will share the $300,000 annual Welch Award recognizing their lifetime achievements in biosynthesis and bioorganic chemistry. The two chemists have decoded the blueprints for the manufacture of many of nature's more beneficial products, including vitamin B12, one of its most complex structures.

"These insights set the stage for further efforts to mimic nature and produce vitamins, antibiotics and other beneficial products in a shorter time and with less cost in terms of both money and the impact on the environment," said Richard J. V. Johnson, chairman of the board, The Welch Foundation. "The work of Drs. Battersby and Scott truly embodies the spirit of the Welch Award: basic research in chemistry that contributes to the betterment of humankind."

"Working separately, these two chemists have significantly increased our understanding of how nature makes products essential to human life," said Norman Hackerman, chairman of the Welch Scientific Advisory Board. "In particular, after several decades of effort, Dr. Scott and Dr. Battersby each finally unraveled the complicated pathway for creating vitamin B12 * a significant achievement. Their research shows great creativity combined with dedication and patience, using chemistry to answer difficult biological questions."

Both men began their careers in the United Kingdom, studying synthetic organic chemistry. In the early 1960s both began researching how plants made molecules: Dr. Scott studying penicillin and anti-tumor agents, Dr. Battersby morphine and alkaloids for treatment of childhood leukemia. Organisms make substances like these through a series of reactions, each catalyzed by a specific enzyme. It was the development of a new technique in the late 1960s that first allowed scientists to begin studying complex molecules with vast numbers of sequential reactions. The Welch Award co-recipients were pioneers in applying a stable isotope of carbon, available then to researchers for the first time, in conjunction with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to their research.

"I was so excited by the technique's potential power that we began making the materials we would need even before we had funding for a suitable NMR spectrometer," said Dr. Battersby. "B12 * a structure called 'frighteningly complex' by colleagues * presented just the challenge I like. And the elucidation of the pathway to it, in collaboration with an outstanding group of French biologists, is one of the major highlights of my scientific career." Adding the techniques of molecular biology and genetics to the enormous power of organic chemistry and spectroscopy, the Anglo-French team completed the mapping of the B12 pathway in the mid-1980s. This research also made it possible to increase the productivity level of microorganisms making the compound.

Dr. Battersby used the approach to study other "pigments of life" * what he calls the group that includes the chlorophylls essential for photosynthesis, the porphyrins of oxygen-carrying hemoglobin and myglobin, and other bio-molecules critical to life.

Dr. Scott's research followed a similar pattern: initial success in understanding B12's structure, followed by years of frustration. "We only had a homemade NMR at Yale in the late '60s, but the results were absolutely clear cut," he said. For him, too, the final breakthrough came in the mid-1980s, when he began "gene hunting," identifying the DNA making the enzymes that were making the B12. Dr. Scott was able to combine 12 enzymes to carry out the 17-step synthesis of the B12 nucleus.

He says that he has "come full circle, returning to his synthetic organic chemistry roots," and is studying how to replicate the process for various products. "Instead of having to cut down whole forests to get enough of a beneficial compound, this technique will allow us to pull the DNA out of a single leaf and use it to make as much of the compound as needed * more quickly and less expensively."

Calling chemistry "the language we use to explain biology and medicine," Dr. Scott also has discovered a second process that nature uses to make B12. He notes that the two pathways evolved two billion years apart, depending on whether or not an organism required oxygen. Currently his diverse lab is looking to apply the lessons learned from his B12 research to make other products, such as the cancer treatment taxol. He also recently started new research to use RNA, instead of DNA, as a template for carrying out organic synthesis.

Dr. Scott was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1928, and earned a Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from Glasgow University. After post-doctoral work, he held chairs in organic chemistry at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, at the University of Sussex and at Yale University, before moving to Texas A&M in 1977.

Among his research honors are the Corday-Morgan and Centenary Medal (Royal Society of Chemistry), A.C. Cope Scholar and Guenther Awards (American Chemical Society), and the Tetrahedron Prize (also shared with Dr. Battersby). He is a fellow of the Royal Society, Royal Society of Edinburgh and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has received honorary degrees from the Universities of Coimbra and Paris. Dr. Scott also is a member of the European Academy of Arts and Sciences and Humanities, the Scientific Academy of Siena, and a founding member of the Yale Sherlock Holmes Society.

Born in 1925, Dr. Battersby earned bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry from the University of Manchester and a doctorate from the University of St. Andrews. Following post-doctoral work in the U.S., he returned to England as a lecturer at the University of Bristol, and then held a chair at the University of Liverpool. In 1969, he accepted the Chair of Organic Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. Since his university retirement in 1992, he first continued research with private funding and currently is writing detailed reports of his findings.

He has had numerous honors including the Roger Adams Award in Organic Chemistry (U.S.), Wolf Prize in Chemistry (Israel), Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize for Chemistry (Italy), Paul Karrer Medal (Switzerland), August Wilhelm von Hofmann Memorial Medal (Germany), the Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Chemistry, and the Davy Medal and Royal Medal, The Royal Medal (England), the Windaus and Inhoffen Medals (Germany) and the Longstaff and Corday-Morgan Medals. Dr. Battersby holds honorary degrees from six universities and received a Knighthood for his contributions to science in 1992. He is fellow or member of many academies and learned societies worldwide.

The Houston-based Welch Foundation is one of the oldest and largest sources of private funding for basic research in chemistry. Since its founding in 1954, it has provided more than $411 million in support for science. In addition to the Welch Award, first bestowed in 1972, the Foundation funds researchers at 27 Texas institutions, sponsors an annual chemical research conference, provides grants to chemistry departments at small and medium-sized Texas education institutions, underwrites 35 academic chairs in chemistry, organizes a visiting lecture series of prominent scientists, supports a summer scholar program for high school students, and helps fund a biennial conference for chemistry and science teachers at the high school and junior high levels.

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Note: For a photograph of Drs. Battersby or Scott, or a list of previous Welch Award recipients, please call Sarah Voss or Megan Mastal at (713) 752-1900.


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