Professor Wilfred van der Donk

Winner: 2020 Pedler Award

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute

For the combined application of organic chemistry, molecular biology, and biochemistry to study posttranslationally modified peptides and phosphonate natural products.

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There is nothing more exhilarating to me than discovering a new enzymatic reaction, finding a new natural product, or understanding how an antibiotic kills a bacterium.
Professor Wilfred van der Donk

Professor Wilfred van der Donk’s laboratory works at the interface between chemistry and biology. His research group studies how enzymes can perform remarkable chemical reactions, and whether these enzymes can be used to produce value-added materials.

In addition, Professor van der Donk’s laboratory works on the discovery of new natural products produced by bacteria and fungi that could function as future antibiotics or anti-cancer compounds.

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Professor Wilfred van der Donk was born in the Netherlands and received his B.S. and M.S. from Leiden University, working in the laboratory of Jan Reedijk. He moved to the USA in 1989 to pursue his Ph.D. in organic chemistry under Kevin Burgess at Rice University. After postdoctoral work at MIT with JoAnne Stubbe, he joined the faculty at the University of Illinois in 1997, where he currently holds the Richard E. Heckert Chair in Chemistry. He has been an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 2008.

Research in his laboratory uses organic chemistry, enzymology and molecular biology to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms of enzyme catalysis. His group also explores the utility of enzymes for synthetic purposes. Professor van der Donk’s particular interests have been enzymatic reactions in the biosynthesis of peptide and phosphonate antibiotics, and engineering of cyclic peptide libraries.

The work in his laboratory has been recognized by a number of awards including an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (2001), Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2002), ACS Pfizer Award (2004), ACS Cope Scholar Award (2006), the Jeremy Knowles Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2010), the Emil Thomas Kaiser Award of the Protein Society (2013), the Repligen award (2017), and the Vincent du Vigneaud Award of the American Peptide Society (2017). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Q+A

What motivates you?

The road to discovery. There is nothing more exhilarating to me than discovering a new enzymatic reaction, finding a new natural product, or understanding how an antibiotic kills a bacterium. And the process of figuring things out is so much fun, solving a puzzle by combining hypotheses, data, and interpretation.

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

Follow your interests and don’t worry whether it is a hot field or not. The popularity of fields can change rapidly but working on something that interests you will always be satisfying.

Why do you think teamwork is important in science?

I have been blessed with a large number of exciting collaborations across disciplines and have published with theoreticians, microbiologists, structural biologists, and engineers. I have always been impressed by the depth of knowledge of my collaborators in their fields and thrilled by the realization that together we were able to do so much more than if we have addressed the same question separately. Teamwork has also been extremely valuable to my co-workers who have come to look at questions from different angles and appreciate, and sometimes learn, different techniques.

What is your favourite element?

Sulfur. Nature can do so much with this element that opens up so much different chemistry.

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