Donald Caspar

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Donald L. D. Caspar
Born(1927-01-08)January 8, 1927
DiedNovember 27, 2021(2021-11-27) (aged 94)
Tallahassee, Florida
NationalityAmerican
Other namesDon Caspar
CitizenshipAmerican
Alma mater Cornell University (BA)
Yale University (PhD)
AwardsFellow of the Biophysical Society Award
Scientific career
Fields Structural biology
Institutions California Institute of Technology
Florida State University
Brandeis University
Birkbeck, University of London
King's College London
Thesis The Radial Structure of Tobacco Mosaic Virus (1955)
Doctoral advisor Ernest C. Pollard
Other academic advisors Max Delbrück
Rosalind Franklin
Doctoral students Stephen C. Harrison [1]
Other notable students Kenneth Holmes (postdoctoral researcher) [1]
Website Florida State University page

Donald L. D. Caspar (January 8, 1927 - November 27, 2021) was an American structural biologist (the very term he coined) known for his works on the structures of biological molecules, particularly of the tobacco mosaic virus. [2] [3] [4] He was an emeritus professor of biological science at the Institute of Molecular Biophysics, Florida State University, [5] and an emeritus professor of biology at the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center, Brandeis University. [6] He has made significant scientific contributions in virus biology, X-ray, neutron and electron diffraction, and protein plasticity.

Caspar completed his BA in physics from Cornell University in 1950. He joined Yale University from where he earned his PhD in biophysics in 1955. [3] He was supervised by Ernest C. Pollard. His thesis was on the structure of tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) titled The Radial Structure of Tobacco Mosaic Virus. While waiting for his degree he worked under Max Delbrück at the California Institute of Technology as post doctoral student. [7] He worked with James D. Watson, with whom he had close professional association throughout his career. After receiving his PhD, he went to England having been awarded a fellowship at King's College London under Rosalind Franklin and during 1955–1956 worked with her at Birkbeck College in London. Their meeting was fruitful both personally and professionally. He remained one of Franklin's closest friends during her brief lifetime. In 1956 he and Franklin published individual but complementary papers in the March 10 issue of Nature , together showing that TMV was a hollow rod, rather than a solid structure as generally believed. They also demonstrated that RNA in TMV was wound along the inner surface of the hollow virus. [8] [9] He was not a particularly enthusiastic writer; as a result, Franklin had to write every word of his paper. [10]

At Birkbeck one of his colleagues was Aaron Klug with whom he developed research collaborations throughout his career. [11] In 1962, they introduced the concept of quasi-equivalence to account for the arrangement of proteins on the surface of icosahedral virus particles. [12] Caspar-Klug theory has played an important part in shaping the subsequent study of viruses and other macromolecular assemblies. The original concept was based mainly on electron microscope studies, and has now been refined to take account of the atomic resolution structure of viruses, and other details of protein–protein interactions that crystallography has elucidated. Quasi-equivalence continues to be an important component of the philosophical basis for how we think about macromolecular assemblies. [5]

In 1994 Caspar received the Guggenheim Fellowships. [13] He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. [4] He was elected a member of the Biophysics and Computational Biology section of the National Academy of Sciences in 1994. [14] He received the first Fellow of the Biophysical Society Award in 2000. [15]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Capsid</span> Protein shell of a virus

A capsid is the protein shell of a virus, enclosing its genetic material. It consists of several oligomeric (repeating) structural subunits made of protein called protomers. The observable 3-dimensional morphological subunits, which may or may not correspond to individual proteins, are called capsomeres. The proteins making up the capsid are called capsid proteins or viral coat proteins (VCP). The capsid and inner genome is called the nucleocapsid.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virology</span> Study of viruses

Virology is the scientific study of biological viruses. It is a subfield of microbiology that focuses on their detection, structure, classification and evolution, their methods of infection and exploitation of host cells for reproduction, their interaction with host organism physiology and immunity, the diseases they cause, the techniques to isolate and culture them, and their use in research and therapy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rosalind Franklin</span> British chemist, biophysicist and X-ray crystallographer (1920–1958)

Rosalind Elsie Franklin was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, and graphite. Although her works on coal and viruses were appreciated in her lifetime, Franklin's contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA were largely unrecognized during her life, for which Franklin has been variously referred to as the "wronged heroine", the "dark lady of DNA", the "forgotten heroine", a "feminist icon", and the "Sylvia Plath of molecular biology".

<i>Tobacco mosaic virus</i> Virus affecting plants of the Solanaceae family

Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) is a positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus species in the genus Tobamovirus that infects a wide range of plants, especially tobacco and other members of the family Solanaceae. The infection causes characteristic patterns, such as "mosaic"-like mottling and discoloration on the leaves. TMV was the first virus to be discovered. Although it was known from the late 19th century that a non-bacterial infectious disease was damaging tobacco crops, it was not until 1930 that the infectious agent was determined to be a virus. It is the first pathogen identified as a virus. The virus was crystallised by Wendell Meredith Stanley. It has a similar size to the largest synthetic molecule, known as PG5.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martinus Beijerinck</span> Dutch microbiologist

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aaron Klug</span> British biophysicist and chemist (1926–2018)

Sir Aaron Klug was a British biophysicist and chemist. He was a winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his development of crystallographic electron microscopy and his structural elucidation of biologically important nucleic acid-protein complexes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plant virus</span> Virus that affects plants

Plant viruses are viruses that affect plants. Like all other viruses, plant viruses are obligate intracellular parasites that do not have the molecular machinery to replicate without a host. Plant viruses can be pathogenic to vascular plants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plasmodesma</span> A pore connecting between adjacent plant cells

Plasmodesmata are microscopic channels which traverse the cell walls of plant cells and some algal cells, enabling transport and communication between them. Plasmodesmata evolved independently in several lineages, and species that have these structures include members of the Charophyceae, Charales, Coleochaetales and Phaeophyceae, as well as all embryophytes, better known as land plants. Unlike animal cells, almost every plant cell is surrounded by a polysaccharide cell wall. Neighbouring plant cells are therefore separated by a pair of cell walls and the intervening middle lamella, forming an extracellular domain known as the apoplast. Although cell walls are permeable to small soluble proteins and other solutes, plasmodesmata enable direct, regulated, symplastic transport of substances between cells. There are two forms of plasmodesmata: primary plasmodesmata, which are formed during cell division, and secondary plasmodesmata, which can form between mature cells.

<i>Tobacco virtovirus 1</i> Species of satellite virus

Tobacco virtovirus 1, informally called Tobacco mosaic satellite virus, Satellite tobacco mosaic virus (STMV), or tobacco mosaic satellite virus, is a satellite virus first reported in Nicotiana glauca from southern California, U.S.. Its genome consists of linear positive-sense single-stranded RNA.

M. R. N. Murthy, was a professor of molecular biophysics at the Indian Institute of Science, IISc, Bangalore. He currently teaches at the Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology, Bengaluru. His chief contributions are in the area of X-ray crystallography. He was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award for outstanding contribution to physical sciences, which is the highest honour for a scientist in India, in the year 1992.

Robley Cook Williams was an early biophysicist and virologist. He served as the first president of the Biophysical Society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrej Šali</span> American biologist (born 1963)

Andrej Šali is a computational structural biologist. Since 2003, he has been Professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences at University of California, San Francisco. He also serves as an editor of the journal Structure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Macromolecular assembly</span>

The term macromolecular assembly (MA) refers to massive chemical structures such as viruses and non-biologic nanoparticles, cellular organelles and membranes and ribosomes, etc. that are complex mixtures of polypeptide, polynucleotide, polysaccharide or other polymeric macromolecules. They are generally of more than one of these types, and the mixtures are defined spatially, and with regard to their underlying chemical composition and structure. Macromolecules are found in living and nonliving things, and are composed of many hundreds or thousands of atoms held together by covalent bonds; they are often characterized by repeating units. Assemblies of these can likewise be biologic or non-biologic, though the MA term is more commonly applied in biology, and the term supramolecular assembly is more often applied in non-biologic contexts. MAs of macromolecules are held in their defined forms by non-covalent intermolecular interactions, and can be in either non-repeating structures, or in repeating linear, circular, spiral, or other patterns. The process by which MAs are formed has been termed molecular self-assembly, a term especially applied in non-biologic contexts. A wide variety of physical/biophysical, chemical/biochemical, and computational methods exist for the study of MA; given the scale of MAs, efforts to elaborate their composition and structure and discern mechanisms underlying their functions are at the forefront of modern structure science.

Satyabrata Sarkar,, was a scientist, investigating physiological phenomena in plants and then studying the structure and function of plant-pathogenic viruses in the Max-Planck-Institute for Biology in Tübingen and at the University of Hohenheim in Germany. Later on he was teaching Bengali language and literature in the Department of Indology of the University of Tübingen. On 11 December 2022 he died aged 94.

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References

  1. 1 2 Cohen, Carolyn (November 9, 2007). "Seeing and Knowing in Structural Biology". Journal of Biological Chemistry. 282 (45): 32529–32538. doi: 10.1074/jbc.X700001200 . ISSN   0021-9258. PMID   17848543.
  2. ↑ "Donald L.D Caspar". Dignity Memorial. Retrieved December 3, 2021.
  3. 1 2 "Don Caspar". Oral History Collection. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Retrieved January 21, 2015.
  4. 1 2 "Donald Caspar". World Science Festival. Science Festival Foundation. Retrieved January 21, 2015.
  5. 1 2 "Donald L. D. Caspar". Florida State University.
  6. ↑ "Donald L. D. Caspar". Brandeis University. Archived from the original on January 21, 2015. Retrieved January 21, 2015.
  7. ↑ "Donald L. D. Caspar". Academic Tree. Retrieved January 21, 2015.
  8. ↑ Franklin, RE (1956). "Structure of Tobacco Mosaic Virus: Location of the Ribonucleic Acid in the Tobacco Mosaic Virus Particle". Nature. 177 (4516): 928–930. doi:10.1038/177928b0. S2CID   4167638.
  9. ↑ Casper, D. L. D. (1956). "Structure of Tobacco Mosaic Virus: Radial Density Distribution in the Tobacco Mosaic Virus Particle". Nature. 177 (4516): 928. doi: 10.1038/177928a0 . S2CID   30394190.
  10. ↑ Maddox, Brenda (2003). Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA. London: HarperCollins. p. 269. ISBN   0-00-655211-0.
  11. ↑ "Aaron Klug – Biographical". Nobel Media. Retrieved January 21, 2015.
  12. ↑ Caspar DL, Klug A (1962). "Physical principles in the construction of regular viruses". Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology. 27: 1–24. doi:10.1101/sqb.1962.027.001.005. PMID   14019094.
  13. ↑ "Donald L. D. Caspar". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Archived from the original on January 21, 2015. Retrieved January 21, 2015.
  14. ↑ "Donald L. D. Caspar". National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved January 21, 2015.
  15. ↑ "Fellow of the Biophysical Society Award". Biophysical Society. Retrieved January 21, 2015.
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