Amie Kathleen Boal is an American chemist. She is an

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. Overview In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a ...

of chemistry, biochemistry, and molecular biology at

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...

. In 2020, Boal was the recipient of the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry from the

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all d ...

Early life and education

Boal is a native of

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry from Pomona College and her PhD in the same subject from the California Institute of Technology. Boal wrote her thesis, ''DNA-Mediated Charge Transport in DNA Repair,'' which won the Herbert Newby McCoy Award, in 2008 under the guidance of

Jacqueline Barton Jacqueline K. Barton (born May 7, 1952 New York City, NY), is an American chemist. She worked as a Professor of Chemistry at Hunter College (1980–82), and at Columbia University (1983–89) before joining the California Institute of Technology. ...

. Following this, Boal accepted a post-doctoral position in

Amy Rosenzweig Amy C. Rosenzweig is a professor of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences at Northwestern University. She was born in 1967 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her current research interests include structural biology and bioinorganic chemistry, metal uptak ...

's laboratory at

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

where she studied interactions between platinum-based anticancer therapeutics and human copper homeostasis proteins. During her post-doctoral fellowship, Boal was awarded a

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

(NIH) Pathway to Independence Award and an NIH

Ruth L. Kirschstein Ruth Lillian Kirschstein (12 October 1926 – 6 October 2009) was an American pathologist and science administrator at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Kirschstein served as director of the National Institute of General Medical Scienc ...

National Research Service Award.

Career

Boal remained at Northwestern until 2013 when she joined the Departments of Chemistry and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at

. Her research focused on understanding the structural basis for mechanism and function in diverse families of metalloenzymes. Upon joining the faculty, she was named a Searle Scholar to support her independent research into understanding how microorganisms acquire and use metal ions. Following this, she collaborated with

Squire Booker Squire Booker is an American biochemist at Pennsylvania State University, Penn State University. Booker directs an interdisciplinary chemistry research program related to fields of biochemistry, enzymology, protein chemistry, natural product biosy ...

to determine the three-dimensional structure of the RlmN protein from the bacterium. As a result of her collaborative research, Boal was the recipient of a Maximizing Investigators' Research Award for Early Stage Investigators at the NIH. Prior to her promotion to

, Boal was the senior author of a study that showed that a new subclass of ribonucleotide reductase (RNR) was able to use a modified amino acid instead of a metal ion as the oxidizing agent. In the same year, she was recognized with a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award for being a young chemist who has "created an outstanding independent body of scholarship, and are deeply committed to education." Boal and her research team later solved an x-ray crystal structure of SznF, showing that the protein contains two different active sites. As a result, she teamed up with

Emily Balskus Emily P. Balskus is an American chemical biologist, enzymologist, microbiologist, and biochemist born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1980. She has been on the faculty of the Chemistry and Chemical Biology department of Harvard University since 2011 and ...

from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

to explore how the bacterium that lives in soil produces streptozotocin. Prior to the start of the 2019–20 academic year, Boal was promoted to the rank of associate professor. During the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, Boal was the recipient of the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry from the

Awards

* 2020 – Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry * 2018 – Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards * 2014 - Searle Scholars Program * 2012 – NIH Pathway to Independence Award

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Boal, Amie Living people Scientists from Portland, Oregon American women biochemists Pomona College alumni California Institute of Technology alumni Pennsylvania State University faculty Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women Searle Scholars Program recipients