PSB '98 Keynote Address

Structural Biology and Biocomputing:
A Marriage Made in Heaven or in the Other Place?

by

Gregory Petsko

Gregory Petsko is currently the Gyula and Katica Tauber Markey Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry at Brandeis University. He was educated at Princeton University, where he majored in classical literature and chemistry, and at Oxford University, where he received his D. Phil. in Molecular Biophysics in 1973. Professor Petsko attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and did his dissertationwork with Sir David C. Phillips on the three-dimensional structure of triosephosphate isomerase, an important protein in human metabolism. After a brief sojourn at the Institute de Biologie Physico-Chimique in Paris, where he worked on cryobiochemistry with Prof. Pierre Douzou, he accepted a position as Instructor at Wayne State University School of Medicine, where he was promoted to Assistant Professor in 1975. In 1979 he moved to M.I.T. as Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry. He became full Professor of Chemistry at M.I.T. in 1985. In 1990 he moved to Brandeis as the Lucille P. Markey Professor in both the department of Chemistry and the department of Biochemistry. He was appointed to the Tauber chair in 1997, succeeding its first holder, Prof. William Jencks. Professor Petsko is also a member of the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center at Brandeis, and assumed the position of Director of the Center in January of 1994, succeeding Prof. Hugh Huxley. Professor Petsko is a founding scientist of ArQule, Inc., of Medford Massachusetts, one of the world's leading companies in combinatorial chemistry.

Professor Petsko's research interests are the determination of protein three-dimensional structure and the relationship of that structure to biological function. The tools he uses include X-ray crystallography, genetic engineering, and molecular dynamics simulations. He is currently focussing on several specific problems: catalysis of proton transfer by racemases and isomerases, the role of magnesium ions in carbohydrate- processing enzymes, novel protein therapy for cystic fibrosis, and the design of drugs for the treatment of ataxia telangiectasia and breast cancer. In the Fall of 1995, his research activities expanded to include a year's sabbatical work in yeast genetics in the laboratory of Professor Ira Herskowitz, chairman of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine. As a result, Prof. Petsko now has a budding yeast genetics program (pun intended), which is concerned with protein turnover and membrane remodelling in stationary phase cells.

Professor Petsko's work has received numerous awards, including an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, a U.S. Public Health Service Research Career Development Award, the Siddhu Award of the American Crystallographic Association, an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Senior Scientist Award, and the Pfizer Award in Enzymology from the American Chemical Society. In 1991 he shared the Max Planck Prize with Professor Roger Goody of Heidelberg for their studies of proteins involved in causing human cancer. In 1995 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Professor Petsko describes himself as overweight, out of shape, and frequently grouchy, conclusions largely unsupported by peer review. While teaching, research, and communicating the importance of basic scientific research to general audiences take up increasing amounts of his time as he grows chronologically older, Professor Petsko continues to enjoy good writing, old movies, bushwalking in Australia, New Hampshire and the American Southwest, 12-year old single malt scotch, and high performance cars. (He usually drives, however, a Jeep Cherokee.) Professor Petsko states that his greatest achievement is and always will be the young scientists he has helped to train.