Ronald Raines Awarded Khorana Prize from The Royal Society of Chemistry

Roger and Georges Firmenich Professor of Natural Products Chemistry Ronald T. Raines has been named the winner of the 2022 Khorana Prize by The Royal Society of Chemistry. Named for the late, longtime member of the Department of Chemistry faculty and Nobel Laureate Har Gobind Khorana, this award is given in honor of outstanding contributions through work at the chemistry and life science interface.

Raines, who was awarded this prize in recognition of his work “translating fundamental chemical understanding of collagen into the life sciences and towards the clinic,” earned his SB from MIT, and recalls Khorana’s lab space occupying the entire fifth floor of the Dreyfus Building, which continues to house many of the Department of Chemistry labs and offices. In 1968, Khorana won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis. He died on November 9, 2011.

The Khorana Prize consists of a monetary award, a medal and certificate, and an honorific lecture tour in the UK.

Using techniques that range from synthetic chemistry to cell biology, the Raines group is illuminating in atomic detail both the chemical basis and the biological purpose for protein structure and protein function.