Andreas Marx awarded Albrecht Kossel Prize

Prof. Andreas Marx was awarded the renowned Albrecht Kossel Prize yesterday (1 October). The prize was presented by the German Chemical Society (GDCh) at the “Biochemistry 2024” conference in Dortmund. The 7,500-euro prize has been awarded every two years since 2014 to personalities who have made outstanding contributions to the field of biochemistry.

According to the selection committee, Prof. Marx’s research has enabled groundbreaking contributions to the study of protein-nucleic acid interactions. He particularly impressed the committee of experts with his research on the development of methods for nucleic acid replication and protein modification, as well as the discovery of a human RNA ligase.

This is an enzyme that enables the joining – known in molecular biology as ligation – of RNA strands. Until the discovery of the RNA ligase “C12orf29” by Prof. Marx and his team, such RNA ligases were not known in vertebrates and humans. In a study published last year, the researchers were able to show that C12orf29 can protect human cells from oxidative cellular stress by repairing damaged RNA strands. The selection committee for the Albrecht Kossel Prize considers this work to be an outstanding example of the symbiosis of different scientific disciplines in the molecular life sciences.

“This award is a great honour,” said Prof. Marx, who sees it as an acknowledgement not only of his own work, but also of that of his entire team. “The name Albrecht Kossel is a very great one in our field, and the prize named after him makes me proud,” he added. Albrecht Kossel (1853-1927) was a German biochemist, physician and physiologist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1910 for his research on the cell nucleus, as well as for isolating nucleic acids and determining how they are constituted.

About Prof. Marx

Andreas Marx studied chemistry and, after graduating in Bochum in 1994, he obtained his doctorate from the University of Basel in 1997. This was followed by a postdoc at Nagoya University in Japan before he moved to the University of Bonn as a group leader in 1999. There, he obtained his “Habilitation” (post-doctoral qualification making an individual eligible to take up a professorship) in organic chemistry and biochemistry in 2003. In 2004, he was appointed Professor of Organic Chemistry/Cellular Chemistry at the University of Konstanz. He has been President of Friedrich Schiller University Jena since August 2024.