Douglas Youvan

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Douglas Youvan
Douglas Youvan, 2010.jpg
Douglas Youvan, 2010
Born (1955-01-29) January 29, 1955 (age 70)
Frontenac, Kansas
Nationality American
Alma mater University of California, Berkeley
Scientific career
Fields Biophysics
Institutions MIT and Kairos Scientific Inc.[ citation needed ]

Douglas Charles Youvan (born January 29, 1955) is an American biophysicist and mathematician. [1]

Contents

Biography

Youvan received an associate degree in electronics and a bachelor's degree in biology from Pittsburg State University.[ citation needed ] He received his Ph.D. degree in biophysics from UC Berkeley in 1981. [2]

Youvan was an associate professor of chemistry at MIT, [2] where he specialized in the study of photosynthesis, specifically the spectral analysis of photosynthetic bacteria. Youvan, along with Mary M. Yang, developed instrumentation to study the spectra of bacteria directly from a petri dish.[ definition needed ]

Research focus

In his 1981 Ph.D. thesis, Youvan found inhibitors (hypermodified nucleosides) of retroviral reverse transcriptase present in ribosomal RNA. [3] [4]

His work correctly predicted the secondary structure of the 11 transmembrane helices of the reaction center as confirmed by X-ray crystallography. In 1987 Youvan and E. Bylina constructed the first site-directed mutants of bacterial reaction centers. [5]


References

  1. ↑ O’Leary, Denyse (2024-09-02). "Biophysicist Proposes "Spiritual Particle"". Evolution News and Science Today. Retrieved 2025-07-27.
  2. 1 2 pachecotorgal (2025-06-03). ""The stars made our minds, and now our minds look back"". Pacheco-Torgal (in European Portuguese). Retrieved 2025-07-27.
  3. ↑ Youvan, DC; Hearst, JE (1979). "Reverse transcriptase pauses at N2-methylguanine during in vitro transcription of Escherichia coli 16S ribosomal RNA". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 76 (8): 3751–4. Bibcode:1979PNAS...76.3751Y. doi: 10.1073/pnas.76.8.3751 . PMC   383911 . PMID   91169.
  4. ↑ Youvan, DC; Hearst, JE (1981). "A sequence from Drosophila melanogaster 18S rRNA bearing the conserved hypermodified nucleoside am psi: analysis by reverse transcription and high-performance liquid chromatography". Nucleic Acids Research. 9 (7): 1723–41. doi:10.1093/nar/9.7.1723. PMC   326793 . PMID   6164994.
  5. ↑ Govindjee (2005). Discoveries in Photosynthesis. Advances in Photosynthesis and Respiration. Vol. 20. Springer-Verlag. p. 58. ISBN   9781402033247.
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