To recognize someone whose scientific contributions have had a significant and lasting impact on research at the interface of chemistry and biology

Daniel Kahne, the Higgins Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, is this year's winner of the Gordon Hammes Lectureship Award, which is sponsored jointly by Biochemistry and the American Chemical Society's (ACS) Division of Biological Chemistry.

Alanna Schepartz, Editor-in-Chief of Biochemistry, said, “Kahne’s studies on the mechanisms and machines used to assemble the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria are paradigmatic and lay a foundation for the discovery of fundamentally new antibiotics.

“He is an awesome choice for the 2019 Gordon Hammes Lectureship Award.”

Kahne will receive his award and present the Gordon Hammes Lecture at the ACS Fall 2019 National Meeting and Exposition in San Diego, CA on Sunday, August 25.

To celebrate his award—and give a brief trailer for his talk—Kahne answered questions in a short interview with the ACS:

Why did you choose to pursue this field of research?

I am not sure.  I was trained as a synthetic organic chemist, and I came to biochemistry because I got interested in a problem, and it seemed like biochemistry was the best way to answer my question.  Biochemistry allows me to combine my training in chemistry and my interests in biology.

What are you working on now?

I am interested in how cells assemble their outer membrane.  We study this problem using Gram-negative bacteria as the model but the problem is relevant to all cells because chloroplasts and mitochondria come from (in the ancient past) Gram-negative bacteria and also have an outer membrane.  Some of the machinery that we study that builds these outer membranes is conserved so the chemistry that these machines do in a cell is pretty important.

What do you anticipate working on in the future?

I want to finish the job of figuring out how the bacterial outer membrane is built.  One way to prove that we understand how the membrane is built is to design molecules that inhibit this biogenesis process.  That is where we want to go in the future.  Molecules that interfere with the machines that make the outer membrane will kill the bacteria.  This is important because we need more antibiotics to treat Gram-negative infections, especially antibiotic-resistant ones.

What is important in training the next generation of researchers?

I think all scientists need to learn what makes something an interesting problem to study.  A problem isn’t interesting just because lots of people study it

What advice do you have for the next generation of researchers?

Don’t follow the crowd.  Find new problems that other people haven’t thought about yet.  Try to have fun and don’t spend too much time thinking about your career.   I worry that young scientists are too focused on being professional.  You need to make time for other things in order to allow your mind to be flexible (creative).