Bengt Mannervik

Bengt Mannervik (born 19 August 1943 in Stockholm), is a Swedish biochemist known especially for work on enzymes related to glutathione metabolism.

Education

After secondary education under his birth name, Bengt Eriksson, at Norra Real in Stockholm, Bengt Mannervik studied at Stockholm University In 1988 he moved to Uppsala University as holder of the Karin and Herbert Jacobsson endowed chair in biochemistry. In addition he is an adjunct professor at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, from 2013 to 2029. Bengt Mannervik studied enzymes of glutathione metabolism, including studies of levels in different tissues, structure and catalytic activity of glutathione transferase, a purification method, a detailed review on the isoenzymes of glutathione transferase, and many others. These publications have had a major influence on the field of glutathione biochemistry. Each of those mentioned above, together with three others, had been cited more than 1000 times by the end of 2024, the first In all he has had nearly 600 publications, with a combined total of more than 47000 citations.

His interest in glutathione transferases has continued after his retirement, for example studies of their role as efficient ketosteroid isomerases and as enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of moulting hormones in mosquitoes transmitting malaria and yellow fever.

In addition to the work directed specifically at enzymes involved in glutathione metabolism and detoxication, Mannervik coauthored texts on molecular toxicology.

He also studied various more general aspects of enzymology, including graphical analysis, error structure of kinetic experiments, weighting of observations, regression methods, directed enzyme evolution, and discrimination between models.

Major contributions were more recently directed to the evolution of novel functions by in vitro protein evolution.

Doctoral supervision Mannervik has supervised more than 60 PhD students and among them Tamas Bartfai, U. Helena Danielson, Mikael Widersten, Per Jemth, Ylva Ivarsson, Vijayakumar Boggaram, M. Kalim Tahir, Usama Hegazy, and Abeer Shokeer have become university professors.

Honours

Bengt Mannervik (born Eriksson) studied at the prestigious high school Norra Real in Stockholm and was given the prize for the best graduate in 1962. In 1988 he won the competition among 20 applicants for the internationally advertised Karin and Herbert Jacobsson Professorship of Biochemistry at Uppsala University, originally held by Nobel Prize Laureate Arne Tiselius. He was elected to the Academia Europaea in 2023. He was elected to the American Association for Cancer Research, and the Royal Society of Sciences at Uppsala. He is an Honorary Member of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He was nominated Doctor Jubilaris at Stockholm University in 2022.