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Faculty
Peter Schultz
Professor
Department of Chemistry
TSRI - 1999
Joint Appointments The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology
Education
B.S., California Institute of Technology, 1979
Ph.D., California Institute of Technology, 1984
Postdoctoral Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1984
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1985- present
Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, 1985 - 1987
Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, 1989-1999
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, 1994 -1998
Director, Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation, 1999 – present
Scripps Family Chair Professor of Chemistry, The Scripps Research Institute, 1999 – present.
Awards & Activities
Alan T. Waterman Award, National Science Foundation, 1988
Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, American Chemical Society, 1990
American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry, 1990
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1990
Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry, American Chemical Society, 1991
DuPont Merck Young Investigator Award, The Protein Society, 1992
National Academy of Sciences, USA, 1993
Wolf Prize in Chemistry, 1994
California Scientist of the Year Award, 1995
Alfred Bader Award in Bioorganic and Bioinorganic Chemistry, 2000
Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Award, 2002
Research Focus
Biological Chemistry
Peter G. Schultz was born on June 23, 1956 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated summa cum laude from Caltech in 1979 and continued there for his doctoral degree (in 1984) with Professor Peter Dervan. He then spent a year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Professor Christopher Walsh before moving to the University of California, Berkeley, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is currently the Scripps Family Chair Professor of Chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute and Director of the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation.
Schultz's group first reported the observation (simultaneously with Richard Lerner) that antibodies could selectively catalyze chemical reactions. Since that first report, antibodies have been generated that catalyze a large number of reactions, in some cases with rates rivaling enzymes. Characterization of these catalysts is providing new insights into the evolution of binding and catalysis as well as the molecular basis for immunological recognition.
Schultz and Lerner's demonstration that the vast library of antibody molecules of the immune system can be tapped to generate selective catalysts has also helped to usher in a new age in chemistry in which the power of biological and chemical diversity systems are being exploited to control interactions of molecules. Schultz is applying this combinatorial approach to problems ranging from cell biology and drug discovery to materials science. For example, he has developed a new technology for the parallel synthesis, processing and screening of large libraries of solid state inorganic and organic materials (electronic, magnetic, optical and catalytic) for new properties. He is also combining structure-based chemical library design with cell-based screens and genomics tools to identify small molecules with novel biological properties.
Schultz has also pioneered the development of general methods to site-specifically incorporate unnatural amino acids with novel steric and electronic properties into proteins (both in vitro and in vivo) and unnatural bases into DNA (in vitro). This method has effectively expanded the genetic code to include over eighty unnatural amino acids with novel backbone and side chain structures. This technology may provide a new generation of proteins with properties not restricted by the naturally occurring amino acids.
Schultz is a founder of Affymax, Symyx Technologies, Syrrx, Kalypsys, Phenomix, Ambrx and Ilypsa.
Selected References
Chin, J.W., Cropp, T.A., Anderson, J.C., Zhang, Z., Schultz, P.G. "An Expanded Eukaryotic Genetic Code," Science, 301:964, 2003.
Wu, X., Ding, S., Ding, Q., Gray, N.S., Schultz, P.G. "Small Molecules that Induce Cardiomyogenesis in Embryonic Stem Cells," J. Amer. Chem. Soc., 126:1590, 2004.
Yin, J., Beuscher, A., Andryski, S., Stevens, R.C., Schultz, P.G. "Structural Plasticity and the Evolution of Antibody Affinity and Specificity," J. Mol. Biol., 330:651, 2003.
Zhang, Z., Gildersleeve, J., Y.Y. Yang, Xu, R., Loo, J., Uryu, S., Wong, C.H., Schultz, P.G. "A New Strategy for the Synthesis of Glycoproteins," Science, 303(16):371, 2004.
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