Macon Abernathy, '15

Macon Abernathy, ’15, B.S., environmental science – toxicology, is an associate scientist at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University, where he works with some of the brightest X-rays in the world at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource.

Abernathy works in the structural and molecular biology group driving the development of X-ray science in both environmental systems and in his field of specialty, metalloproteins. Each year they’re finding ways to examine tinier and tinier samples with the SSRL. Think micro- and nanoscale volumes of proteins and metals.

Lately, Abernathy has been studying the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway, which he calls “one of, if not the most ancient metabolic pathway that we know of on Earth.”

This ancient anaerobic carbon fixation pathway might play a role in solving a very modern problem: greenhouse gas pollution caused by carbon dioxide.

“It uses all these crazy, hetero-metallic clusters,” Abernathy says, “embedded in these supramolecular protein complexes that basically take carbon dioxide and turn it into acetate.”

His group has a paper under review with the journal Nature about the discovery of the enzyme primarily responsible for biological methane formation, captured in its active state. After a colleague was able to grow crystals of the protein enzyme for the first time, Abernathy used spectroscopy to help the team prove the enzyme was in its active form.

“This enzyme is incredibly difficult to work with,” Abernathy says. “Folks have been trying for about 40 years to understand how it produces methane. And we just cracked the active form of the enzyme.”

Abernathy was interested in science when he arrived at Western, but he opted to major in philosophy until his fourth year, when he switched to environmental science. (He still only took five years to graduate – switching his major to chemistry would have taken six, he says.)

In the Environmental Science Department, Abernathy worked closely with Professor Ruth Sofield, studying environmental toxicology and participating in the Science and Management of Contaminated Sites (SMoCS) course series as well as assisting in her lab.

Since coming to the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, Abernathy has had another opportunity to work with Sofield.

“I started a collaboration with her on an unrelated project, just as a way of saying thank you,” he says. “Western is a very special place, and I think Ruth Sofield is the GOAT.”