About Professor Jacqueline K. Barton

Dr. Jacqueline K. Barton is the Arthur and Marian Hanisch Memorial Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. She is a native New Yorker. Barton was awarded the A.B. summa cum laude at Barnard College in 1974 and a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry at Columbia University in 1978 in the laboratory of S. J. Lippard. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Bell Laboratories and Yale University with R. G. Shulman, she became an assistant professor at Hunter College, City University of New York. In 1983, she returned to Columbia University, becoming an associate professor of chemistry and biological sciences in 1985 and professor in 1986. In the fall of 1989, she joined the faculty at Caltech.

Professor Barton has pioneered the application of transition metal complexes to probe recognition and reactions of double helical DNA. She has designed chiral metal complexes that recognize nucleic acid sites with specificities rivaling DNA-binding proteins. These synthetic transition metal complexes have been useful in elucidating fundamental chemical principles that govern the recognition of nucleic acids, in developing luminescent and photochemical reagents as new diagnostic tools, and in laying a foundation for the design of novel chemotherapeutics. Most recently, her research group has designed bulky metallointercalators as site-specific probes of DNA base mismatches. These complexes are now being applied in the discovery of single base mutations and in new diagnostic and chemotherapeutic strategies targeted to mismatch repair deficient cells. Barton has also carried out seminal studies to elucidate electron transfer chemistry mediated by the DNA double helix. She first showed that oxidative damage to DNA can arise from a distance through charge migration through the DNA duplex. She furthermore established that DNA charge transport chemistry is exquisitely sensitive to intervening perturbations in the DNA base stack, as with single base mismatches or lesions. This chemistry has since been applied in the development of DNA-based electrochemical sensors for mismatches, lesions, and protein binding. Barton is now also focused on establishing where this chemistry is harnessed within the cell. DNA charge transport may provide a route for long range signaling among DNA-bound proteins and may be critical to understanding DNA damage and repair within the cell.

Barton has received numerous awards. These include the Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation (1985), the American Chemical Society (ACS) Award in Pure Chemistry (1988), the ACS Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry (1987), ACS Garvan Medal (1992), and the ACS Breslow Award in Biomimetic Chemistry (2003). She has also received the ACS Baekeland Medal (1991), the Fresenius Award (1986), the ACS Tolman Medal (1994), the Mayor of New York's Award in Science and Technology (1988), the Havinga Medal (1995), the Paul Karrer Medal (1996), the ACS Nichols Medal (1997), the Weizmann Women & Science Award (1998), the ACS Gibbs Medal (2006), the ACS Cotton Medal (2007), and the ACS Pauling Medal (2007). She was a fellow of the Sloan Foundation, a Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, and an NSF Presidential Young Investigator. She is a recipient of a prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (1991) and she has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991), the American Philosophical Society (2000), and the National Academy of Sciences (2002). She has received eight honorary doctorates including, most recently, Yale University (2005). She also received university medals from Barnard College (1990) and Columbia University (1992). She has, in addition, served the chemical community through her participation in ACS, governmental and industrial boards. Based upon her industrial board service, she was named an Outstanding Director by ODX (2006).