Jacqueline Barton

Jacqueline K. Barton ( born May 7, 1952 in New York City ) is an American chemist. She is a professor at Caltech.

Barton graduated from Barnard College with a bachelor 's degree (summa cum laude) in 1974 and from Columbia University with a doctorate in inorganic chemistry in 1978 with Stephen Lippard. As a post - doctoral student, she was at Bell Laboratories and at Yale University with Robert Shulman. After that, she was a professor at Hunter College, in 1983 at Columbia University and in 1989 at Caltech.

It deals with the chemistry of DNA and showed that this not only in the base sequence stores information but also interesting physico-chemical properties, especially with respect to the electron transport along the double strand (DNA mediated charge transfer, DNA CT) and its influence on DNA damage and repair. Perhaps those involved in the localization and repair of damage in DNA Enzymes DNA CT use. For the study of the structure and dynamics of DNA duplexes used them with their research group specific metal organic complexes.

They developed in their research group also electronic chips, each using DNA CT of the binding site of proteins ( such as transcription factors ) and m- RNA can be localized to the DNA. This has applications if they serve as markers for cancer and other diseases.

In 1991, she was MacArthur Fellow. In 2006 she received the Willard Gibbs Medal, the 1987 Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry and 2010, the National Medal of Science. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

Jacqueline Barton is married to Peter Dervan and has a daughter.