Beskrivelse
Plants produce a wealth of drugs and other useful natural products. These compounds are often structurally complex, limited by difficulties in accessing source species and beyond the reach of chemical synthesis. The discovery – by Professor Anne Osbourn – that genes for specialised metabolic pathways are organised like beads on a string in plant genomes has fuelled the findings of novel plant compounds and pathways. At the height of her career, she decided to take a year off to study poetry. Today, poetry and plant research support each other. Anne Osbourn is receiving the 2023 Novozymes Prize for her pioneering work that has opened new opportunities to access chemicals from plants, produce important drugs in higher amounts, and improving plants’ natural defence systems to benefit both people’s health and the sustainability of the planet.
