Winding path leads to plant enzyme breakthrough

After finishing high school in Singapore, where she grew up, Manajit Hayer–Hartl trained as a teacher because, she said, “Most educated women in those days in Singapore ended up being teachers.”

Manajit Hayer–Hartl

She lasted about a year before realizing that she didn’t want to read the science her 14-year-old students read; she wanted new, exciting science. So she applied to a chemistry Ph.D. course in Scotland. It wasn’t what her parents had in mind, but “my parents couldn’t really stop me since I wasn’t relying on (them) for funding,” she said.

“I can laugh about it now, but 40 years ago you really had to fight against the system.”

Her fight paid off with a distinguished career and, most recently, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’s 2020/2021 ASBMB–Merck Award for research in biochemistry and molecular biology.

After her Ph.D. and postdoc, Hayer–Hartl met her future husband, Ulrich Hartl, at a meeting in Greece. He wanted to move to the U.S., and “I’m a nice wife so I went along,” she said. She worked in his protein folding lab in New York, which led to some new experiences.

“I’d never run a gel in my life,” she said. Others in the lab were unfamiliar with her chemistry skills. It was a great melding of knowledge. When the couple moved to the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Hayer–Hartl worked independently in her husband’s lab.

With the goal of studying how the photosynthesis enzyme RuBisCo is synthesized in plant cells, in 2006 Hayer–Hartl became the leader of her own research group at Max Planck. She was the first person to synthesize plant RuBisCo in Escherichia coli and firmly established herself as the leading expert on RuBisCo biogenesis. This work not only earned her the respect of colleagues across fields from plant biology to biochemistry but brings her daily joy.

“Every day I learn something new,” she said. “This is where I find the greatest satisfaction.”