Andreas Marx, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, received the 2024 Albrecht Kossel Award from the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh, German Chemical Society). This award recognizes outstanding research in biochemistry and was presented at the conference of the GDCh Division of Biochemistry in Dortmund, Germany, on October 1, 2024.
Andreas Marx is one of the world’s leading scientists in biochemistry and chemical biology. His research has made significant contributions to the study of protein-nucleic acid interactions. The award committee was impressed by his outstanding work on the functions of DNA, RNA, and proteins, which has provided valuable insights into DNA polymerases, RNA ligases, and post-translational protein modifications, as well as the development of related applications. The committee views Marx’s work as a shining example of the symbiosis between different scientific disciplines in the molecular life sciences.
Andreas Marx, born in 1968, studied chemistry at the Universities of Freiburg, Germany, Sussex, UK, and Bochum, Germany. After graduating from the Ruhr University Bochum in 1994, he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Basel, Switzerland, under the supervision of Bernd Giese in 1997. He then moved to the University of Nagoya, Japan, for a postdoctoral stay before joining the Kekulé Institute for Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Bonn, Germany, as a group leader in 1999. There, he completed his habilitation in organic chemistry and biochemistry in 2003. In 2004, Marx was appointed Full Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Marx has been President of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena since August 2024. Since August 1, 2024, he has been a Professor of Biological Chemistry at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
Among other honors, Andreas Marx received two ERC Advanced Grants, the Karl Heinz Beckurts Prize in 2014, and the František Šorm Memorial Medal of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in 2017.
Selected Publications
- Chemical synthesis of 2″OMeNAD+ and its deployment as an RNA 2′-phosphotransferase (Tpt1) ‘poison’ that traps the enzyme on its abortive RNA-2′-PO4-(ADP-2″OMe-ribose) reaction intermediate,
Jakob Arnold, Shreya Ghosh, Renata Kasprzyk, Marcel Brakonier, Markus Hanna, Andreas Marx, Stewart Shuman,
Nucleic Acids Res. 2024, 52, 10533–10542.
https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkae695 - Identification of small molecules that are synthetically lethal upon knockout of the RNA ligase Rlig1 in human cells,
Florian M. Stumpf, Silke Müller, Andreas Marx,
RSC Chem. Biol. 2024, 5, 833–840.
https://doi.org/10.1039/d4cb00125g - A desthiobiotin labelled NAD+ analogue to uncover Poly(ADP‐ribose) polymerase 1 protein targets,
Sonja Rieth, Daniel Spliesgar, Jan Orth, Maike Lehner, Renata Kasprzyk, Florian Stengel, Andreas Marx,
ChemBioChem 2024.
https://doi.org/10.1002/cbic.202300797 - Novel strategies for the site-specific covalent labelling of nucleic acids,
Samuel H. Weisbrod, Andreas Marx,
Chem. Commun. 2008.
https://doi.org/10.1039/b809528k - Quantitative analysis of the binding affinity of poly(ADP-ribose) to specific binding proteins as a function of chain length,
Jörg Fahrer, Ramon Kranaster, Matthias Altmeyer, Andreas Marx, Alexander Bürkle,
Nucleic Acids Res. 2007, 35, e143–e143.
https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkm944 - An Efficient Method for the Construction of Functionalized DNA Bearing Amino Acid Groups through Cross‐Coupling Reactions of Nucleoside Triphosphates Followed by Primer Extension or PCR,
Petr Čapek, Hana Cahová, Radek Pohl, Michal Hocek, Christian Gloeckner, Andreas Marx,
Chem. Eur. J. 2007, 13, 6196–6203.
https://doi.org/10.1002/chem.200700220
