Richard E. Dickerson

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Richard Earl Dickerson (born October 8, 1931 in Casey (Illinois) ) is an American biochemist.

Live and act

Dickerson studied chemistry at the Carnegie Institute of Technology with a bachelor's degree in 1953 and received his PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Minnesota with William Lipscomb in 1957 with a dissertation on boron hydrides. As a post-doctoral student he was 1958/59 at Cambridge University (Cavendish Laboratory) with John C. Kendrew and 1957/58 at the University of Leeds as a National Science Foundation Fellow. In 1959 he became an assistant professor at the University of Illinois and in 1963 an associate professor of physical chemistry and later professor at Caltech . From 1981 he was a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles , where he taught in the faculty of chemistry and biochemistry as well as geophysics and planetary science. 1983 to 1994 he was director of the Molecular Biology Institute.

In 1997/98 he was visiting professor at Oxford. There he received an MA in 1998

At Caltech he studied the evolution of the cytochrome c molecule in bacteria, fish and mammals. He was able to contribute to the elucidation of the principles of evolution at the molecular level and was subsequently also an expert in court hearings on attempts by creationists to change school curricula.

Dickerson was the first to carry out a single crystal X-ray structure analysis of B-DNA with the Dickerson dodecamer named after him (base sequence CGCGAATTCGCG). In addition to the various double helix forms of DNA (in addition to B, A and Z), he investigated complexes of DNA and proteins (for example repressors, restriction enzymes , various control enzymes such as the Fis and Hin proteins in Salmonella, reverse transcriptase of HIV) and DNA and drugs such as these against cancer such as the alkylating agents netropsin, distamycin, anthramycin or against HIV.

He is also the author of several textbooks.

In 1989 he received the Dickson Prize in Science . He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1985), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1988) and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1985).

He has been married to Lola Dickerson since 1956 and has five children.

Fonts

Books

  • with Irving Geis: Chemistry: - a lively and descriptive introduction, Wiley-VCH 1981, 1990, 1999 (translator Barbara Schröder)
  • with Harry B. Gray , Gilbert P. Haight: Principles of Chemistry, De Gruyter 1978, 2nd edition 1988 (translated and edited by Hans-Werner Sichting )
  • English original: Chemical Principles, Benjamin-Cummings, 1974, 3rd edition 1979
  • with Irving Geis: The structure and action of proteins, Harper and Row 1969
    • German translation: Structure and function of proteins, Wiley-VCH 1971, 1984 (translator and editor Barbara Schröder, Henning Hopf )
  • Molecular Thermodynamics, Benjamin 1969
  • Present at the Flood: How Structural Molecular Biology Came About, Sinauer Associates

Articles (selection)

  • The structure and history of an ancient protein, Scientific American, April 1972 (on Cytochrome C)
  • Cytochrome c and the Evolution of Energy Metabolism, Scientific American, March 1980
  • Chemical evolution and the origin of life, Scientific American, September 1978
  • The DNA Helix and how it is read, Scientific American, December 1983
  • with WL Walker, ML Kopka, ME Filipowsky, DS Goodsell: Design of B-DNA Crosslinking and Sequence-Reading Molecules., Biopolymers, Volume 35, 1994, pp. 543-553.
  • with DS Goodsell, HL Ng, ML Kopka, JW Lown: Structure of a dicationic monoimidazole lexitropsin bound to DNA ,. Biochemistry, Vol. 34, 1995, pp. 16654-16661.
  • with DS Goodsell, ML Kopka: Refinement of netropsin bound to DNA: bias and feedback in electron density map interpretation, Biochemistry, Volume 34, 1995, pp. 4983-4993.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Birth and career dates for American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. ↑ Website at the NAS
personal data
SURNAME Dickerson, Richard E.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dickerson, Richard Earl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Casey (Illinois)