Ronald T. Raines

Ronald T. Raines is an American chemical biologist. He is the Roger and Georges Firmenich Professor of Natural Products Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is known for using ideas and methods of physical organic chemistry to solve important problems in biology.

Education

Raines was born and raised in the

Career

Raines was a member of the faculty at the

• Revelation of the basis for the conformational stability of collagen, which is the most abundant protein in animals.[6] This work led to the discovery that unappreciated chemical forces—the n→π* interaction^[7] and C5 hydrogen bond^[8]—contribute to the stability of nearly every protein.^[9] His hyperstable collagens are in preclinical trials for the detection and treatment of wounds and fibrosis.
• Discovery of how to endow an otherwise innocuous human RNA-cleaving enzyme with toxicity that is specific for cancer cells.^[10] Such a ribonuclease is in a human clinical trial as an anti-cancer agent.
• Mechanistic insight on cellular redox homeostasis^[11] and on imperatives for the uptake of cationic proteins and peptides by mammalian cells.^[12]
• Invention of chemical processes to synthesize proteins^[13] and to convert crude biomass into useful fuels and chemicals,^[14] and fluorogenic probes to image the uptake of molecules into living cells.^[15]

Raines serves on the editorial advisory boards of the journals ACS Chemical Biology; Bioconjugate Chemistry; Current Opinion in Chemical Biology; Peptide Science; Protein Engineering, Design & Selection; and Protein Science. He was the Chair of the NIH study section that evaluated grant applications in synthetic and biological chemistry.

Awards and honors

References