BIOGRAPHY:

Frances Arnold, in full Frances Hamilton Arnold, (born July 25, 1956,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), American chemical engineer who was awarded
the 2018 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for her work on directed evolution of
enzymes. She shared the prize with American biochemist George P. Smith
and British biochemist Gregory P. Winter.

Arnold received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical and aerospace

engineering from Princeton University in 1979 and a doctorate in chemical
engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985. She spent a year
as a postdoctoral fellow at Berkeley before arriving at the California Institute of
Technology (Caltech) as a visiting associate. She became an assistant professor in
1987, an assoicate professor in 1992, and finally a full professor in 1996.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, research that used enzymes
to catalyze chemical reactions was very difficult, because the typical approach
involved trying to figure out from first principles how to change an enzyme. Arnold
decided to use a different approach, that of evolution. She altered the
enyzme subtilisin E, which breaks down the protein casein, so it would work in
the solvent dimethylformamide (DMF) instead of in the watery environment of
a cell. She introduced many random mutations into the genetic
code of bacteria that made subtilisin E, and she introduced her mutated enzymes
into an environment that contained both DMF and casein. She selected the new
enzyme that was best at breaking down casein in DMF and introduced random
mutations into that enzyme. After three such generations, she ended up with a
mutated subtilisin E that was 256 times better at breaking down casein in DMF
than the original.

Arnold and her coworkers extended the technique of directed enzyme evolution to
change enzymes for reactions that no enzyme had catalyzed before. They also
evolved enzymes to make substances with bonds that do not occur in biology,
such as bonds between carbon and silicon and carbon and boron.
Arnold cofounded two companies based on her work. Gevo, founded in 2005, uses
yeast to make isobutanol, which can be used instead of ethanol in making fuel.
Provivi, founded in 2013, alters insect pheromones so that pests harmful to crops
will be unable to mate with each other.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Arnold received in 2011 the Charles Stark Draper
Prize and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
Arnold es pionera en el uso de la evolución dirigida para diseñar enzimas
que realizan funciones nuevas o que funcionan de manera más efectiva que
las enzimas naturales.
Otras aplicaciones del trabajo de Arnold fueron la producción de
biocombustibles, en especial el isobutanol, que puede producirse con bacterias
E. coli, pero requiere el cofactor NADPH. Las E. coli producen la nicotinamida
adenina dinucleótido, o NADH, por ello, Arnold diseñó enzimas que usan NADH
para permitir la producción del isobutanol.
Otra de las investigaciones consiste en la recombinación de proteínas, usada
para formar nuevas proteínas con funciones únicas. Para ello desarrolló el
método computacional SCHEMA, usado para crear simulaciones y predecir como
combinar proteínas y después aplicar la evolución dirigida, para mutarlas para
lograr optimizar sus funciones.
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Life

Frances Arnold was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the United
States. She studied mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton
University. She then continued her studies at the University of California, Berkeley,
where she earned a doctorate in chemical engineering in 1985. She has
subsequently worked at the California Institute of Technology. She became
interested in energy technology early and formed a company in 2005 to produce
renewable fuels.
Work

Evolution – the adaption of species to different Environments – has created an

enormous diversity of life. Frances Arnold has used the same principles – genetic
change and selection – to develop proteins that solve humankind’s chemical
problems. In 1993, Arnold conducted the first directed evolution of enzymes, which
are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. The uses of her results include more
environmentally friendly manufacturing of chemical substances, such as
pharmaceuticals, and the production of renewable fuels.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2018/arnold/facts/

contributions:

Biofuels, prescription drugs, medical devices—they’re all products of a

global chemical manufacturing industry in which Frances Arnold is a maker
of makers. To create a chemical reaction that produces, say, a lifesaving
drug, chemists often rely on starter substances called enzymes. They’re
complex protein molecules notoriously difficult to produce and manage in
the lab. Yet nature makes enzymes all the time, easily and precisely, using
DNA, optimized for just the task over millions of years of evolution. By
introducing random mutations into the DNA of bacteria and mimicking
evolution in commercial-like lab settings, Arnold encourages the bacteria to
evolve over time into enzyme manufacturing plants, producing precision-
designed enzymes resistant to conditions in commercial lab settings that
typically render enzymes impractical for commercialization. Her method,
called “directed evolution,” made mass production viable and opened the
door to medicines, biofuels, antibodies, consumer products, gene delivery
systems, vaccines, and a world of products previously difficult, if not
impossible, to make. Today, the Nobel Prize-winner and others who use the
techniques she pioneered are shaping new solutions to the world’s grand
challenges through more sustainable, less expensive chemical
manufacturing.

Over the last three decades Arnold doubled down on her hypotheses, and the
resulting body of work has contributed to a major paradigm shift in biological
design philosophy. She is a pioneer in directed evolution methods to engineer
biocatalysts for the use of living, biological systems or their parts to speed up
chemical reactions and impart the desired very high chemical specificity
characteristic of natural enzymes. All of this is based on the premise that artificial
selection can be used in the lab setting to optimize biological function.

https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-47373195#:~:text=Frances%20Arnold%2C
%20la%20Nobel%20que%20us%C3%B3%20el%20poder%20de,evoluci
%C3%B3n%20para%20revolucionar%20la%20qu%C3%ADmica&text=Derechos
%20de%20autor%20de%20la,de%20Tecnolog%C3%ADa%20de%20California
%2C%20Caltech.