R. John Collier

Robert John Collier , called John Collier, (born August 6, 1938 in Wichita Falls ) is an American microbiologist and biochemist, professor at Harvard Medical School . He is known for research on bacterial toxins .

Life

Collier studied at Rice University (bachelor's degree in 1959) and Harvard Medical School , where he received his doctorate in biology in 1964. As a post-doctoral student, he was at the Institute for Molecular Biology in Geneva from 1964 to 1966. From 1966 he was first assistant professor and later professor of bacteriology at the University of California, Los Angeles . In 1973/74 he was a Guggenheim Fellow at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. From 1984 he was a professor at Harvard Medical School in the Faculty of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, which he headed in 1995/96. From 1988 to 1994 he was dean for graduate education and head of the medical faculty.

He researches the effects and structure of bacterial toxins, especially with diphtheria toxin (partly with his teacher Alwin M. Pappenheimer ) and later especially with anthrax toxins, which are easier to investigate than diphtheria toxins. What these toxins have in common is the structure of an A-chain, which develops its actual harmful effect in the cytosol of the cell interior, and a B-chain, which fulfills binding functions to the cell membrane and partially forms pores through which the A-chain penetrates the host cell can. They are therefore also called AB toxins . In the case of anthrax toxin, the components LF (Lethal Factor) and EF (Edema Factor) belong to the A-chain and the PA (Protective Antigen) to the B-chain , which is used to smuggle LF and EF into the cell from the endosomes .

In 1966/67 he showed that the diphtheria toxin inactivates the elongation factor -2 in the presence of NAD and thus intervenes in the protein synthesis of the cell. Between 1978 and 1980 he and his student Gary Gilliand developed the first generation of diphtheria toxin-derived immunotoxins (as independently at about the same time T. Uchida in Japan and Ellen Vitetta and Jonathan Uhr in Dallas). In 1980 Collier succeeded in presenting diphtheria toxin in a crystalline form in his laboratory, which finally made it possible to elucidate the three-dimensional structure using X-ray crystallography in collaboration with the laboratory of David Eisenberg at UCLA (1992). In 1983, Collier cloned and sequenced the gene for the diphtheria toxin in his laboratory. In 1984, Collier showed the role of glutamic acid as a residue in all bacterial toxins which, like diphtheria toxin, use the mechanism of ADP-ribosylation such as cholera , Pseudomonas , whooping cough .

In 1990 he received the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize and in 1972 the Eli Lilly Award . He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (since 1991) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (since 1993) and an external member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences .

He has been married since 1962 and has three children.

Web links

• Collier's website at Harvard Medical School, particularly on his research on anthrax toxin

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Birth and career data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
2. ^ Obituary for Alwin Pappenheimer in Biographical Memoirs National Academy of Sciences by H. Sherwood Lawrence, Volume 77, 1999