George Huntly Lorimer

Last updated
George Lorimer

FRS
Born
George Huntly Lorimer

(1942-10-14) October 14, 1942 (age 80) [1]
Education George Watson's College [1]
Alma mater
Awards Humboldt Prize (1997)
Scientific career
Institutions University of Maryland
Thesis The role of oxygen in photorespiration  (1972)
Website www.chem.umd.edu/faculty-staff-directory/facultydirectory/george-lorimer

George Huntly Lorimer (born 1942) [1] FRS [2] is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Maryland. [1] [3]

Contents

Career and research

Lorimer is recognized for his work on mechanism of two proteins, RuBisCO and the GroE chaperonins. Rubisco is the enzyme responsible for photosynthetic carbon fixation, and the GroE chaperonins enable the Adenosine triphosphate (ATP)-dependent folding of many other proteins. [2]

Using Oxygen-18 Lorimer demonstrated the oxygenase activity of RuBisCO, both in vivo and in vitro . [2] He further established the novel mechanism for the activation of RuBisCO by carbon dioxide, the formation of a lysyl-carbamate in the active site. [2] With his colleagues at DuPont he employed chemical quench and other techniques to trap and identify the 6-carbon reaction intermediate of the carboxylation reaction and defined the complete stereo-chemical course of the reaction. [2]

In 1989, using an unequivocally unfolded protein and the purified chaperonin proteins GroEL and GroES, his group was the first to demonstrate the ATP-dependent folding of RuBisCO and many other proteins. [2] With Devarajan (Dave) Thirumalai he performed a bioinformatic analysis to define the structural elements of the substrate proteins that GroEL recognizes. [2] Lorimer has also shown that GroEL can perform work on substrate protein during allosteric transitions. He has determined the crystal structure of the functional form, the symmetric GroEL:GroES2 “football” and established that the GroEL rings operate as parallel-processing, iterative annealing machines. [2]

Awards and honors

Lorimer is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) of London. [2] He was awarded the Humboldt Prize in 1997. [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chaperone (protein)</span> Proteins assisting in protein folding

In molecular biology, molecular chaperones are proteins that assist the conformational folding or unfolding of large proteins or macromolecular protein complexes. There are a number of classes of molecular chaperones, all of which function to assist large proteins in proper protein folding during or after synthesis, and after partial denaturation. Chaperones are also involved in the translocation of proteins for proteolysis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RuBisCO</span> Key enzyme of the photosynthesis involved in carbon fixation

Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase, commonly known by the abbreviations RuBisCo, rubisco, RuBPCase, or RuBPco, is an enzyme involved in light-independent part of photosynthesis, including the carbon fixation by which atmospheric carbon dioxide is converted by plants and other photosynthetic organisms to energy-rich molecules such as glucose. It emerged approximately four billion years ago in primordial metabolism prior to the presence of oxygen on earth. It is probably the most abundant enzyme on Earth. In chemical terms, it catalyzes the carboxylation of ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Calvin cycle</span> Light-independent reactions in photosynthesis

The Calvin cycle,light-independent reactions, bio synthetic phase,dark reactions, or photosynthetic carbon reduction (PCR) cycle of photosynthesis is a series of chemical reactions that convert carbon dioxide and hydrogen-carrier compounds into glucose. The Calvin cycle is present in all photosynthetic eukaryotes and also many photosynthetic bacteria. In plants, these reactions occur in the stroma, the fluid-filled region of a chloroplast outside the thylakoid membranes. These reactions take the products of light-dependent reactions and perform further chemical processes on them. The Calvin cycle uses the chemical energy of ATP and reducing power of NADPH from the light dependent reactions to produce sugars for the plant to use. These substrates are used in a series of reduction-oxidation reactions to produce sugars in a step-wise process; there is no direct reaction that converts several molecules of CO2 to a sugar. There are three phases to the light-independent reactions, collectively called the Calvin cycle: carboxylation, reduction reactions, and ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate (RuBP) regeneration.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">GroEL</span> Protein-coding gene in the species Homo sapiens

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

Phosphoribulokinase (PRK) (EC 2.7.1.19) is an essential photosynthetic enzyme that catalyzes the ATP-dependent phosphorylation of ribulose 5-phosphate (RuP) into ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate (RuBP), both intermediates in the Calvin Cycle. Its main function is to regenerate RuBP, which is the initial substrate and CO2-acceptor molecule of the Calvin Cycle. PRK belongs to the family of transferase enzymes, specifically those transferring phosphorus-containing groups (phosphotransferases) to an alcohol group acceptor. Along with ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RuBisCo), phosphoribulokinase is unique to the Calvin Cycle. Therefore, PRK activity often determines the metabolic rate in organisms for which carbon fixation is key to survival. Much initial work on PRK was done with spinach leaf extracts in the 1950s; subsequent studies of PRK in other photosynthetic prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms have followed. The possibility that PRK might exist was first recognized by Weissbach et al. in 1954; for example, the group noted that carbon dioxide fixation in crude spinach extracts was enhanced by the addition of ATP. The first purification of PRK was conducted by Hurwitz and colleagues in 1956.

ATP + Mg2+ - D-ribulose 5-phosphate  ADP + D-ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate
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The kinetic isotope effect (KIE) of ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase oxygenase (RuBisCO) is the isotopic fractionation associated solely with the step in the Calvin-Benson cycle where a molecule of carbon dioxide is attached to the 5-carbon sugar ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate (RuBP) to produce two 3-carbon sugars called 3-phosphoglycerate. This chemical reaction is catalyzed by the enzyme RuBisCO, and this enzyme-catalyzed reaction creates the primary kinetic isotope effect of photosynthesis. It is also largely responsible for the isotopic compositions of photosynthetic organisms and the heterotrophs that eat them. Understanding the intrinsic KIE of RuBisCO is of interest to earth scientists, botanists, and ecologists because this isotopic biosignature can be used to reconstruct the evolution of photosynthesis and the rise of oxygen in the geologic record, reconstruct past evolutionary relationships and environmental conditions, and infer plant relationships and productivity in modern environments.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Anon (2017). "Lorimer, Prof. George Huntly" . Who's Who (online Oxford University Press  ed.). Oxford: A & C Black. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.24943.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Anon (1986). "Professor George Lorimer FRS". royalsociety.org. Royal Society. Archived from the original on 2016-04-10. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
    “All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” -- "Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies". Archived from the original on 2016-11-11. Retrieved 2016-03-09.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  3. 1 2 "Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry – University of Maryland, College Park MD George Lorimer - Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry". www.chem.umd.edu. Archived from the original on 2017-09-28.

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