David W. Deamer | |
---|---|
Born | Santa Monica, CA | April 21, 1939
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Biologist |
Awards | Guggenheim Fellow, 1985 |
Academic background | |
Education | Duke University (B.Sc. 1961) Ohio State University (Ph.D. 1965) |
Alma mater | Ohio State University |
Thesis | The effect of alkaline earth ions on fatty acid and phospholipid monolayers (1965) |
Doctoral advisor | David Cornwell |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Biophysicist |
Institutions | University of California,Santa Cruz |
Notable ideas | nanopore sequencing |
David Wilson Deamer (born April 21,1939) is an American biologist and Research Professor of Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California,Santa Cruz. Deamer has made contributions to the field of membrane biophysics. His work led to a novel method of DNA sequencing and a more complete understanding of the role of membranes in the origin of life.
He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1985,which supported research at the Australian National University in Canberra to investigate organic compounds in the Murchison meteorite. He served as the president of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life from 2013 to 2014. [1]
Deamer's father,also David,worked at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica,California,during and after World War II while his mother Zena cared for Deamer and his two brothers,Richard and John. In 1952,the family moved to Ohio,where the three brothers attended Westerville High School. In 1957,Deamer submitted his research on self-organizing protozoa to the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and was among the 40 winners who were invited to Washington DC that year. He was awarded a full scholarship to Duke University,where he completed a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1961. [2]
Deamer earned a Ph.D. in Physiological Chemistry at the Ohio State University College of Medicine in 1965 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California,Berkeley from 1965 to 1967.
He began his academic career at the University of California,Davis,serving as a professor from 1967 to 1994. [3] In 1994,he joined the University of California,Santa Cruz,where he became a research professor in Chemistry and Biochemistry. [4] He later co- founded the Department of Biomolecular Engineering and served as its chair from 2003 to 2006. [1] Deamer has held visiting scientist positions at the University of Bristol,the Weizmann Institute,and the Australian National University. [3]
As a young professor at UC Davis,Deamer continued to work with electron microscopy,revealing for the first time particles related to functional ATPase enzymes within the membranes of sarcoplasmic reticulum. [5] After spending sabbaticals in England at the University of Bristol in 1971 and with Alec Bangham in 1975,Deamer became interested in liposomes. Conversations with Bangham inspired his research on the role of membranes in the origin of life,and in 1985 Deamer demonstrated that the Murchison carbonaceous meteorite contained lipid-like compounds that could assemble into membranous vesicles. [6] Deamer described the significance of self-assembly processes in his 2011 book First Life. [7] In collaborative work with Mark Akeson,a post-doctoral student at the time,the two established methods for monitoring proton permeation through ion channels such as gramicidin. [8] In 1989,while returning from a scientific meeting in Oregon,Deamer conceived that it might be possible to sequence single molecules of DNA by using an imposed voltage to pull them individually through a nanoscopic channel. The DNA sequence could be distinguished by the specific modulating effect of the four bases on the ionic current through the channel. [9]
In 1993,he and Dan Branton initiated a research collaboration with John Kasianowitz at NIST to explore this possibility with the hemolysin channel,and in 1996 published the first paper demonstrating that nanopore sequencing may be feasible. [10] George Church at Harvard had independently proposed a similar idea,and Church,Branton and Deamer decided to initiate a patent application which was awarded in 1998. [11] Mark Akeson joined the research effort in 1997,and in 1999 published a paper showing that the hemolysin channel,now referred to as a nanopore,could distinguish between purine and pyrimidine bases in single RNA molecules. [12] In 2007,Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) licensed the patents describing the technology [13] and in 2014 released the MinION nanopore sequencing device to selected researchers. The first publications appeared in 2015,one of which used the MinION to sequence E. coli DNA with 99.4% accuracy relative to the established 5.4 million base pair genome. [14] Despite earlier skepticism,nanopore sequencing is now accepted as a viable third generation sequencing method. [15] [16] [17] [18]
Another major area of Deamer’s research is the origin and evolution of cellular membranes. [19] He demonstrated that amphiphilic molecules found in meteorites can self-assemble into membrane- like structures,offering insights into the potential precursors to life on Earth. [20] His experiments with hydration-dehydration cycles revealed pathways for the encapsulation of polymers in primitive vesicles,providing a possible mechanism for the emergence of protocells. [9]
A DNA sequencer is a scientific instrument used to automate the DNA sequencing process. Given a sample of DNA, a DNA sequencer is used to determine the order of the four bases: G (guanine), C (cytosine), A (adenine) and T (thymine). This is then reported as a text string, called a read. Some DNA sequencers can be also considered optical instruments as they analyze light signals originating from fluorochromes attached to nucleotides.
A nanopore is a pore of nanometer size. It may, for example, be created by a pore-forming protein or as a hole in synthetic materials such as silicon or graphene.
Nanopore sequencing is a third generation approach used in the sequencing of biopolymers — specifically, polynucleotides in the form of DNA or RNA.
DNA sequencing is the process of determining the nucleic acid sequence – the order of nucleotides in DNA. It includes any method or technology that is used to determine the order of the four bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. The advent of rapid DNA sequencing methods has greatly accelerated biological and medical research and discovery.
Alpha-toxin, also known as alpha-hemolysin (Hla), is the major cytotoxic agent released by bacterium Staphylococcus aureus and the first identified member of the pore forming beta-barrel toxin family. This toxin consists mostly of beta sheets (68%) with only about 10% alpha helices. The hly gene on the S. aureus chromosome encodes the 293 residue protein monomer, which forms heptameric units on the cellular membrane to form a complete beta barrel pore. This structure allows the toxin to perform its major function, development of pores in the cellular membrane, eventually causing cell death.
Cornelis "Cees" Dekker is a Dutch physicist, and Distinguished University Professor at Delft University of Technology. He is known for his research on carbon nanotubes, single-molecule biophysics, and nanobiology.
The ATP5MC1 gene is one of three human paralogs that encode membrane subunit c of the mitochondrial ATP synthase.
Synaptotagmin-13 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the SYT13 gene.
Epigenomics is the study of the complete set of epigenetic modifications on the genetic material of a cell, known as the epigenome. The field is analogous to genomics and proteomics, which are the study of the genome and proteome of a cell. Epigenetic modifications are reversible modifications on a cell's DNA or histones that affect gene expression without altering the DNA sequence. Epigenomic maintenance is a continuous process and plays an important role in stability of eukaryotic genomes by taking part in crucial biological mechanisms like DNA repair. Plant flavones are said to be inhibiting epigenomic marks that cause cancers. Two of the most characterized epigenetic modifications are DNA methylation and histone modification. Epigenetic modifications play an important role in gene expression and regulation, and are involved in numerous cellular processes such as in differentiation/development and tumorigenesis. The study of epigenetics on a global level has been made possible only recently through the adaptation of genomic high-throughput assays.
A protocell is a self-organized, endogenously ordered, spherical collection of lipids proposed as a rudimentary precursor to cells during the origin of life. A central question in evolution is how simple protocells first arose and how their progeny could diversify, thus enabling the accumulation of novel biological emergences over time. Although a functional protocell has not yet been achieved in a laboratory setting, the goal to understand the process appears well within reach.
Whole genome sequencing (WGS) is the process of determining the entirety, or nearly the entirety, of the DNA sequence of an organism's genome at a single time. This entails sequencing all of an organism's chromosomal DNA as well as DNA contained in the mitochondria and, for plants, in the chloroplast.
John Hagan Pryce Bayley FRS, FLSW is a British scientist, who holds the position of Professor of Chemical Biology at the University of Oxford.
Jene A. Golovchenko was an American physicist. He was born in 1946, and received his PhD in physics in 1972, from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He completed three sets of postdoctoral studies at Aarhus University and spent several years in industry as a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ. His initial interests were in condensed matter physics, nuclear physics, and materials science.
Magnetic sequencing is a single-molecule sequencing method in development. A DNA hairpin, containing the sequence of interest, is bound between a magnetic bead and a glass surface. A magnetic field is applied to stretch the hairpin open into single strands, and the hairpin refolds after decreasing of the magnetic field. The hairpin length can be determined by direct imaging of the diffraction rings of the magnetic beads using a simple microscope. The DNA sequences are determined by measuring the changes in the hairpin length following successful hybridization of complementary nucleotides.
Oxford Nanopore Technologies plc is a UK-based company which develops and sells nanopore sequencing products for the direct, electronic analysis of single molecules. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
Third-generation sequencing is a class of DNA sequencing methods which produce longer sequence reads, under active development since 2008.
Cynthia J. Burrows is an American chemist, currently a distinguished professor in the department of chemistry at the University of Utah, where she is also the Thatcher Presidential Endowed Chair of Biological Chemistry. Burrows was the Senior Editor of the Journal of Organic Chemistry (2001-2013) and became Editor-in-Chief of Accounts of Chemical Research in 2014.,,
Jean-Pierre Leburton is the Gregory E. Stillman Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and professor of Physics at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. He is also a full-time faculty member in the Nanoelectronics and Nanomaterials group of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. He is known for his work on semiconductor theory and simulation, and on nanoscale quantum devices including quantum wires, quantum dots, and quantum wells. He studies and develops nanoscale materials with potential electronic and biological applications.
Karen Elizabeth Hayden Miga is an American geneticist who co-leads the Telomere-to-Telomore (T2T) consortium that released fully complete assembly of the human genome in March 2022. She is an associate professor of biomolecular engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Associate Director of Human Pangenomics at the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute. She was named as "One to Watch" in the 2020 Nature's 10 and one of Time 100’s most influential people of 2022.
Nucleosome Occupancy and Methylome Sequencing (NOMe-seq) is a genomics technique used to simultaneously detect nucleosome positioning and DNA methylation... This method is an extension of bisulfite sequencing, which is the gold standard for determining DNA methylation. NOMe-seq relies on the methyltransferase M.CviPl, which methylates cytosines in GpC dinucleotides unbound by nucleosomes or other proteins, creating a nucleosome footprint. The mammalian genome naturally contains DNA methylation, but only at CpG sites, so GpC methylation can be differentiated from genomic methylation after bisulfite sequencing. This allows simultaneous analysis of the nucleosome footprint and endogenous methylation on the same DNA molecules. In addition to nucleosome foot-printing, NOMe-seq can determine locations bound by transcription factors. Nucleosomes are bound by 147 base pairs of DNA whereas transcription factors or other proteins will only bind a region of approximately 10-80 base pairs. Following treatment with M.CviPl, nucleosome and transcription factor sites can be differentiated based on the size of the unmethylated GpC region.
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