Read exclusive interviews with the winners, Thomas Tørring and Benjamin Philmus, and learn more about their noteworthy, winning research.
The Journal of Natural Products, in partnership with the American Society of Pharmacognosy (ASP), is honored to announce the 2023 winners of the Arthur E. Schwarting and Jack L. Beal Awards. This initiative was launched in 2001 by the Foundation Board of ASP to honor two distinguished former editors of the journal and recognize some of the best works published in the Journal of Natural Products.
Meet Thomas Tørring, Winner of the Arthur E. Schwarting Award
Thomas is an Associate Professor and Group Leader of Microbial Biosynthesis for the Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering at Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmark. He is the recipient of the Arthur E. Schwarting Award, which is open to all papers published in the Journal of Natural Products within a given year.
Read his winning paper:
Triculamin: An Unusual Lasso Peptide with Potent Antimycobacterial Activity
Frederikke D. Andersen, Katja D. Pedersen, Dennis Wilkens Juhl, Tobias Mygind, Paul Chopin, Esben B. Svenningsen, Thomas B. Poulsen, Marie Braad Lund, Andreas Schramm, Charlotte H. Gotfredsen, and Thomas Tørring
Can you give us a short overview of the research you are currently undertaking?
In general, our laboratory is interested in bacteria producing natural products and in particular their potential as antibiotics. One of the projects, we are currently focusing on is lasso peptides, like triculamin described in our paper. I think these are incredibly interesting from a biosynthesis point-of-view and has a lot of potential as a drug scaffold. We recently got a large grant to support research in this area, so I am really excited for the next couple of years.
What does winning this award mean to you and your research?
The research in the paper had been underway for a long time and I was really happy with the final result, so I was very excited and honored when I got the notice. It is also very motivating for me and the students that will continue this work.
Why did you choose to publish with the Journal of Natural Products, and why do you like publishing with the journal?
I see Journal of Natural Products as a core journal for our research area and I also think it is important to support journals that are associated with scientific societies. We got really useful feedback during the review process so while this was my first paper in Journal of Natural Products, it definitely won’t be the last.
Meet Benjamin Philmus, Winner of the Jack L. Beal Award
Benjamin is an Associate Professor for the Department of Pharmeceutical Sciences at Oregon State University. The Jack L. Beal Award is given to early-career investigators within 12 years of receiving their Ph.D. or within 10 years of gaining their first professional appointment (I.e.: Assistant Professor or an equivalent position in industry or government).
Read his winning paper:
Untargeted Identification of Alkyne-Containing Natural Products Using Ruthenium-Catalyzed Azide Alkyne Cycloaddition Reactions Coupled to LC-MS/MS
Daniel Back, Brenda T. Shaffer, Joyce E. Loper, and Benjamin Philmus
J. Nat. Prod. 2022, 85, 1, 105–114
J. Nat. Prod. 2022, 85, 1, 105–114
Can you give us a short overview of the research you are currently undertaking?
Our lab research is focused on natural products, and we take a multidisciplinary approach to studying them. We work in the areas of genome mining, synthetic biology, and natural product discovery and structure determination. Our main focus is currently linking orphan biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) with the molecules that these BGCs produce in an effort to discover new pathways, biochemistry, and molecules. To this end we are using a combination of computational tools and wet lab-based approaches. We focus on cyanobacterial natural products but do our best to perform research that will be broadly applicable and useful to the community.
What does winning this award mean to you and your research?
Being awarded the Beal award was a very humbling experience and reflects the hard work and dedication of the team that I work with. I am extremely proud of Daniel (the lead author) for his work, especially since this was his first publication from his doctoral research to be published.
Why did you choose to publish with the Journal of Natural Products, and why do you like publishing with the journal?
We chose to publish with the Journal of Natural Products because we felt like it would help our research reach the largest number of natural products chemists. Since this was a methods paper, we wanted the exposure so that other research groups could build on our methodology, and we felt Journal of Natural Products gave us that opportunity and reach. Having previously published in and reviewed for Journal of Natural Products in the past, I knew their standards were high, so our paper would get a rigorous review to make it the best possible version but also knew they were fast in their process. And this turned out to be the case as our manuscript was improved by peer review and expertly handled by our editor Dr. Cedric Pearce.
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