Hanus and Sedmera Prize is a newly established award bestowed annually by the Czech J.M. Marci Spectroscopic Society for the work focused on elucidation of molecular structure. The competition is open to researchers of all nationalities in all career stages; the only limiting condition is that the corresponding author must be at least in part affiliated with a Czech research institution. The prize is awarded in two categories: mass spectrometry, in the memory of Vladimir Hanus, and nuclear magnetic resonance, in the memory of Petr Sedmera.
This year’s award in mass spectrometry goes to research team of Marek Šebela from the Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech Republic, for their paper; Identification of N-glycosylation in prolyl endoprotease from Aspergillus niger and evaluation of the enzyme for its possible application in proteomics, which was published in the Journal of Mass Spectrometry.
Šebela graduated from Masaryk University in Brno, in 1994 with a M.Sc. in biochemistry and later with a PhD. In 2007, he was appointed full professor in biochemistry at his home institution. He currently deals with separation, chemical modification and characterization of proteins, in particular MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry of biomolecules, characterization of proteolytic enzymes and plant oxidoreductases.
The prize carries a financial reward sponsored by the local branch of Waters Corporation. Vladimir Hanus whose name the prize bears, was a long time member of the Journal of Organic Mass Spectrometry editorial board, co-founder of mass spectrometry in former Czechoslovakia and one of the pioneers of organic mass spectrometry in the late 1950s. He died in Prague in 2009.
Read the winning paper for free:
- Identification of N-glycosylation in prolyl endoprotease from Aspergillus niger and evaluation of the enzyme for its possible application in proteomics
M. Šebela, P. Řehulka, J. Kábrt, H. Řehulková, T. Oždian, M. Raus, V. Franc, J. Chmelík,
J. Mass Spectrom. 2009, 44, 1587–1595.
DOI: 10.1002/jms.1667
