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
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Contact: Sarah Voss or Megan Mastal
svoss@hillandknowlton.com
713-752-1900
The Welch Foundation
30-May-2000