Frances Arnold, Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry and Director of the Donna and Benjamin M. Rosen Bioengineering Center at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA, USA, has been awarded the 2025 Priestley Medal, the highest honor of the American Chemical Society (ACS). The medal is awarded annually in recognition of outstanding contributions to chemistry.
Frances Arnold is honored “for her pioneering contributions to the development of directed evolution as a method for chemical and biological design.” The award was presented at the National Awards Ceremony held in conjunction with the 2025 ACS Spring Meeting & Exposition.
Research
Frances Arnold is the 2018 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry and co-chair of the US President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. In the early 1990s, she developed the bioengineering method known as directed evolution, which uses the principles of evolution to create new and improved enzymes in the laboratory.
The method is now being used in labs and companies around the world to make everything from detergents to biofuels to pharmaceuticals more efficient and environmentally friendly. She says enzymes created using this technique have replaced toxic chemicals in many industrial processes.
Career and Awards
Frances Hamilton Arnold, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, in July 1956, studied mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University, NJ, USA. After receiving her B.Sc. in 1979, she worked in Brazil and at the Solar Energy Research Institute in Colorado, USA. She received her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, USA, in 1985. After a postdoctoral year in biophysical chemistry at UC Berkeley, she joined the faculty at the Caltech.
Currently, she is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry and Director of the Donna and Benjamin M. Rosen Bioengineering Center at Caltech.
In addition to the Nobel Prize and many other honors, Frances Arnold has received the Draper Prize in 2011, the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2013, the Emanuel Merck Lectureship 2013, and the Millennium Technology Prize in 2016. She is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and of the U.S. Institute of Medicine.
Selected Publications
- Jason Yang, Ravi G. Lal, James C. Bowden, Raul Astudillo, Mikhail A. Hameedi, Sukhvinder Kaur, Matthew Hill, Yisong Yue, Frances H. Arnold, Active learning-assisted directed evolution, Nature Communications 2025. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-55987-8
- Nicholas S. Sarai, Tyler J. Fulton, Ryen L. O’Meara, Kadina E. Johnston, Sabine Brinkmann-Chen, Ryan R. Maar, Ron E. Tecklenburg, John M. Robert, Jordan C. T. Reddel, Dimitris E. Katsoulis, Frances H. Arnold, Directed evolution of enzymatic silicon-carbon bond cleavage in siloxanes, Science 2024, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adi5554
- Runze Mao, Shilong Gao, Zi-Yang Qin, Torben Rogge, Sophia J. Wu, Zi-Qi Li, Anuvab Das, K. N. Houk, Frances H. Arnold, Biocatalytic, enantioenriched primary amination of tertiary C–H bonds, Nature Catalysis 2024. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-024-01149-w
- Carla Calvó-Tusell, Zhen Liu, Kai Chen, Frances H. Arnold, Marc Garcia-Borràs, Reversing the Enantioselectivity of Enzymatic Carbene N−H Insertion Through Mechanism-Guided Protein Engineering, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202303879
- M. Garcia-Borràs, S. B. Jennifer Kan, R. D. Lewis, A. Tang, G. Jimenez-Osés, F. H. Arnold, K. N. Houk, Origin and Control of Chemoselectivity in Cytochrome c Catalyzed Carbene Transfer into Si–H and N–H bonds, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2021, 143, 7114–7123. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.1c02146
- Z. Liu, F. H. Arnold, New-to-nature chemistry from old protein machinery: carbene and nitrene transferases, Curr. Opin. Biotechnol. 2021, 69, 43–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copbio.2020.12.005
- N. S. Sarai, B. J. Levin, J. M. Roberts, D. E. Katsoulis, F. H. Arnold, Biocatalytic Transformations of Silicon—the Other Group 14 Element, ACS Cent. Sci. 2021, 7, 944–953. https://doi.org/10.1021/acscentsci.1c00182
- Frances H. Arnold, Innovation by Evolution: Bringing New Chemistry to Life (Nobel Lecture), Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201907729
- F. H. Arnold, Directed Evolution: Bringing New Chemistry to Life, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2017, 57, 4143–4148. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201708408
- S. B. Jennifer Kan, Russell D. Lewis, Kai Chen, Frances H. Arnold, Directed evolution of cytochrome c for carbon–silicon bond formation: Bringing silicon to life, Science 2016, 354(6315), 1048–1051. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aah6219
- P. S. Coelho, E. M. Brustad, A. Kannan, F. H. Arnold, Olefin Cyclopropanation via Carbene Transfer Catalyzed by Engineered Cytochrome P450 Enzymes, Science 2012, 339, 307–310. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1231434
- P. A. Romero, F. H. Arnold, Exploring protein fitness landscapes by directed evolution, Nat. Rev. Mol. Cell Biol. 2009, 10, 866–876. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrm2805
- K. Brenner, L. You, F. H. Arnold, Engineering microbial consortia: a new frontier in synthetic biology, Trends Biotechnol. 2008, 26, 483–489. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2008.05.004
- K. Chen, F. H. Arnold, Tuning the activity of an enzyme for unusual environments: sequential random mutagenesis of subtilisin E for catalysis in dimethylformamide, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 1993, 90(12), 5618–5622. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.90.12.5618
Also of Interest
Caltech Professor Frances H. Arnold sees laboratory evolution designing biology as solution to human problems
Meeting the 2018 Chemistry Nobel Laureate Frances Arnold and learning about her research field
The prize was awarded to Frances H. Arnold, George P. Smith, and Sir Gregory P. Winter for their work on directed evolution
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