A headshot of Mary Ellen Jones, a snippet from one of her scientific papers, and the building that would eventually bear her name.
In an era when it was difficult for women to advance, Mary Ellen Jones, PhD, was the first woman to chair a department at the UNC School of Medicine and the first woman to be named a Kenan Distinguished Professor.
Jones devoted her career to studying enzymes involved in amino acid and nucleic acid metabolism for more than fifty years. One of her many scientific achievements was her discovery of carbamoyl phosphate, a compound that is essential for the creation of cytosine, thymine, and uracil - the very building blocks that make up our DNA and RNA.
Jones' article titled "Carbamyl Phosphate," which was published in the Journal Science in 1963.
The discovery of carbamoyl phosphate was truly significant. Not only did the finding rapidly influence research in many other laboratories, but her studies also laid the foundation for basic cancer research, said the New York Times, who called her a "crucial researcher on DNA" in a 1996 feature story.
