8 Sep 2016

The chemistry of disease

From Our Changing World, 9:25 pm on 8 September 2016
Guy Jameson

Guy Jameson has won the 2016 Beatrice Hill Tinsley Medal for his research into the structure of enzymes. Photo: Casey Davies / University of Otago

The University of Otago's and MacDiardmid Institute's Guy Jameson is the winner of the 2016 Beatrice Hill Tinsley Medal (formerly the New Zealand Association of Scientist’s Research Medal).

He is a biophysical chemist, who studies the structure of enzymes to help understand the chemical basis of diseases such as Parkinson’s and rheumatoid arthritis.

Guy uses light, and the technique of spectroscopy. He is an expert in Mossbauer spectroscopy, which uses very low temperatures to take 'snapshots' of the internal structure of enzymes. He is particularly interested in enzymes that contain metals such as iron.