Professor Matthew Powner - 2024 Organic 九州影院 mid-career Prize: MSD Prize

Professor Matthew Powner MRSC

Winner: 2024 Organic 九州影院 mid-career prize: MSD Prize

University College London

For pioneering work on the prebiotic synthesis of essential biomolecules including amino acids, peptides and co-factors.

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Professor Powner’s research is focused on understanding the chemical origins of life. The origins of life are at the very frontier of our understanding of nature, the world we live in, who we are, where we came from, and perhaps whether we alone in the universe. Every aspect of our planet is dominated by life and this phenomenon may be unique in the universe. Understanding life and its origins requires a multidisciplinary approach as it raises so many questions, ranging from planetary contexts to the advent of Darwinian evolution. But at the core of this subject, and every aspect of biology, is organic chemistry. Professor Powner’s team use organic chemistry to discover the chemical reactions that could have first developed into life on our planet four billion years ago.

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Professor Matthew Powner obtained a Master’s degree in chemistry at The University of Manchester (2005), and then completed a medicinal chemistry internship at AstraZeneca, Alderley Park. He returned to Manchester to complete his PhD in organic chemistry, working with Professor John Sutherland (2009). He continued his research as an EPSRC Doctoral Prize postdoctoral fellow in Manchester, before being awarded a Harvard Fellowship to work with Nobel laureate Professor Jack Szostak at Massachusetts General Hospital. He returned to the UK, joining the Department of 九州影院 at University College London (2011), where he is currently Professor of Organic 九州影院.

Matthew was an Investigator of the Simons Collaboration on the Origins of Life and a spoke lead for the Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe. He has been awarded various prizes and fellowships, including the ISSOL Stanley Miller Award (2011), the SET for Britain Roscoe Medal (2012), first prize in the Origins of Life Challenge (2012; jointly with John Sutherland), an EPSRC Fellowship (2013), the RSC Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize (2019), and a Blavatnik Award Honouree (2021).

His research interests centre around chemistry associated with the origin of life, and with his research group, he has made contributions in the areas of nucleic acid and peptide chemistry, protometabolic networks, ribozymes, lipids, crystal engineering, catalysis, and photochemistry. The group’s experiments investigate the origins of life’s universally conserved components and the emergence of mechanisms of information transfer, catalysis and self-assembly in the networks of these molecules.

Q&A

Tell us about somebody who has inspired or mentored you in your career.

I've been blessed with amazing colleagues (students, postdocs, collaborators, and mentors) throughout my career; working with talented, motivated, curious, and thoughtful people is always inspiring.

What advice would you give to a young person considering a career in chemistry?

Always challenge yourself; think big, think deep, and think broadly.

Why is chemistry important?

Science is a record of human curiosity, and its advances drive the progress of human civilisation. We live in a chemical world; chemistry and chemical reactions underpins biology, and so physiology and medicine, genetics, evolution, metabolism, and photosynthesis. Food, drink, vitamins and hormones, minerals, fertilisers, drugs, disinfectants, soaps and detergents, fuels and explosives, adhesives, textiles and fabrics, plastics, paints, pigments, and dyes are all chemical, whether synthetic or natural. If you can see it, smell it, touch it, taste it, or feel it, then it involves chemistry and chemicals. Even if you are only imagining something, this is a chemical process too.

What does good research culture look like/mean to you?

Freedom, curiosity, time, and resources are all essential for good research, but a good research culture is also about people being motivated, passionate, innovative, energetic, inclusive, and supportive.

Why do you think collaboration and teamwork are important in science?

Different people think differently, they have different experiences, knowledge, and skills. Good teamwork enables a breadth of perspectives and skills to be harnessed, directed, and united to solve a problem or realise a goal more effectively.

What is your favourite element?

My first instinct, only half in jest, is to say the element in my kettle. I don’t find any of the chemical elements particularly exciting on their own. Many, of course, form allotropes, but chemical elements are best appreciated together in molecules and molecules are best appreciated in reactions rather than in isolation...so, my favourite molecules that are involved in the most interesting and important reactions, are nucleic acids. These molecules have underpinned four billion years of evolution on the Earth. Nucleic acids, like life more generally, are not dependent on one element. Nucleic acids are specific combinations, and importantly arrangements, of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus. If you add sulfur and a few metals too, then these are my favourite elements; together, they and their reactions hold the secrets of life.