John Sutherland

John David Sutherland (born 24 July 1962) is a British chemist at Medical Research Council (MRC), Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), Protein & Nucleic Acid Chemistry Division. His work on the possible chemistry of early life has been widely recognised.

Education Sutherland obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry from the University of Oxford as a student at Lincoln College, Oxford in 1984 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree supervised by Jack Baldwin at Balliol College, Oxford. Since 2013, he has been a Simons Investigator and member of the steering committee for the Simons Collaboration on the Origin of Life.

In 2009, Sutherland, along with Matthew Powner and Beatrice Gerland, detailed the first plausible prebiotic synthesis of activated pyrimidine nucleotides, which had previously been a significant problem for the RNA World hypothesis of early life emergence. Previous prebiotic syntheses of nucleotides had attempted to form them through assembly of their constituent parts, a nucleobase, sugar, and phosphate, but with only limited efficacy for purine nucleotides, and no success for pyrimidine nucleotides. However, Sutherland produced a synthesis resulting in the formation of β-ribocytidine-2',3' cyclic phosphate, a partially activated nucleotide, that is remarkable for its stereospecifity and yield.

In 2015, in an article in Nature Chemistry, Sutherland demonstrated a plausible prebiotic scheme showing that the precursors of pyrimidine nucleotides formed from hydrogen cyanide can also form precursors of lipids and amino acids, providing significant evidence that early life may have emerged from a common chemistry on prebiotic Earth. His work has been heralded by his collaborator and Nobel-prize winning geneticist Jack Szostak as an important advance in understanding the origins of life.

He is a proponent of the emerging field known as systems chemistry.

Honours and awards 2009: The Max Tishler Prize Lectureship, Harvard University, USA 2011: The Royal Society of Chemistry Tilden Prize 2012: Co-winner of the Origin of Life Challenge 2017: Elected Fellow of the Royal Society

Selected publications