Loren Williams

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Loren Dean Williams
Loren Dean Williams.jpg
Born
Seattle, Washington
Alma materUniversity of Washington, Duke University
Scientific career
FieldsBiophysics, biochemistry, astrobiology
InstitutionsGeorgia Institute of Technology
Doctoral advisorBarbara Ramsay Shaw
Websitehttps://ww2.chemistry.gatech.edu/~lw26/

Loren Dean Williams is a biophysicist, biochemist, astrobiologist, and professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia.

Biography[]

Williams was born in Seattle, Washington, and raised in Seattle, Corvallis, Oregon, and Winnipeg, Manitoba. He received his B.Sc. in chemistry from the University of Washington, and he worked in the laboratory of chemist Martin Gouterman. He obtained his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Duke University, where he worked in the laboratory of chemist Barbara Ramsay Shaw.

He was an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow and an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT with biologist Alexander Rich. Williams was Director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute funded RiboEvo Center from 2008 to 2015. He is currently Director of the NASA-funded Center for the Origin of Life (COOL).[1] and is a Co-Lead of the Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environment Consortium (PCE3 a NASA Research Coordination Network).[2]

Williams received an NSF CAREER Award in 1995.

In 2021, Williams was elected Fellow of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL).

Research[]

Williams studies ancestral biochemistry and the origins of life.[3][4] He is interested in the translation system, which is a primary target for chemotherapeutics. His research group uses biophysical chemistry, molecular biology and bioinformatics to understand the extant ribosome across the tree of life and to construct models of ancestral ribosomes.[5] Information in ribosomes from all three domains has allowed his laboratory to construct reaction coordinates for biopolymer evolution.[6][7] One of the broad themes of Williams’ research is the application and extension of biological principles to chemical sciences. In Williams’ formalism, RNA and protein are molecular symbionts and a cell is a consortium of molecules in mutualism relationships.[8]

Williams developed a model in which counterions such as sodium and magnesium interact directly with DNA in solution, and influence DNA conformation.[9][10] This model challenged Richard Dickerson's long-standing non-electrostatic model of DNA conformational heterogeneity.[11] Williams questioned Dickerson's interpretation of X-ray diffraction data and the near-exclusive assignment of water molecules to peaks of electron density adjacent to DNA. In response, Dickerson termed Williams a “rash investigator”.[12]

Williams has investigated the role of iron in the origins of life. He and his group members have shown that under conditions of ancient Earth, i.e., in the presence of ferrous iron and the absence of molecular oxygen, RNA has catalytic power that it lacks on the modern Earth.[13][14] Williams and group members, in collaboration with Jennifer Glass, have shown that ferrous iron is an effective cofactor for the ribosome[15][16] and for a host of additional nucleic acid processing enzymes.[17]

References[]

  1. ^ "COOL". cool.gatech.edu. Retrieved 2021-07-19.
  2. ^ "PCE3 Home Page". prebioticchem.info. Retrieved 2021-07-19.
  3. ^ "Williams Lab". ww2.chemistry.gatech.edu. Retrieved 2021-07-19.
  4. ^ "Loren Dean Williams". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2021-07-19.
  5. ^ Holmes, Bob (2017). "The very first living thing is still alive inside each one of us". New Scientist. Retrieved 2021-08-01.
  6. ^ Petrov, Anton S.; Bernier, Chad R.; Hsiao, Chiaolong; Norris, Ashlyn M.; Kovacs, Nicholas A.; Waterbury, Chris C.; Stepanov, Victor G.; Harvey, Stephen C.; Fox, George E.; Wartell, Roger M.; Hud, Nicholas V. (2014). "Evolution of the ribosome at atomic resolution". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 111 (28): 10251–10256. doi:10.1073/pnas.1407205111. PMC 4104869. PMID 24982194.
  7. ^ Petrov, Anton S.; Gulen, Burak; Norris, Ashlyn M.; Kovacs, Nicholas A.; Bernier, Chad R.; Lanier, Kathryn A.; Fox, George E.; Harvey, Stephen C.; Wartell, Roger M.; Hud, Nicholas V.; Williams, Loren Dean (2015). "History of the ribosome and the origin of translation". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112 (50): 15396–15401. doi:10.1073/pnas.1509761112. PMC 4687566. PMID 26621738.
  8. ^ Lanier, Kathryn A.; Petrov, Anton S.; Williams, Loren Dean (2017). "The Central Symbiosis of Molecular Biology: Molecules in Mutualism". Journal of Molecular Evolution. 85 (1): 8–13. doi:10.1007/s00239-017-9804-x. ISSN 1432-1432. PMC 5579163. PMID 28785970.
  9. ^ Shui, Xiuqi; McFail-Isom, Lori; Hu, Gary G.; Williams, Loren Dean (1998). "The B-DNA Dodecamer at High Resolution Reveals a Spine of Water on Sodium†,‡". Biochemistry. 37 (23): 8341–8355. doi:10.1021/bi973073c. ISSN 0006-2960. PMID 9622486.
  10. ^ Howerton, Shelley B.; Sines, Chad C.; VanDerveer, Don; Williams, Loren Dean (2001). "Locating Monovalent Cations in the Grooves of B-DNA†,‡". Biochemistry. 40 (34): 10023–10031. doi:10.1021/bi010391+. ISSN 0006-2960. PMID 11513580.
  11. ^ Dickerson, Richard E.; Drew, Horace R. (1981). "Structure of a B-DNA dodecamer". Journal of Molecular Biology. 149 (4): 761–786. doi:10.1016/0022-2836(81)90357-0. PMID 6273591.
  12. ^ Chiu, Thang Kien; Kaczor-Grzeskowiak, Maria; Dickerson, Richard E. (1999). "Absence of Minor Groove Monovalent Cations in the Crosslinked Dodecamer C-G-C-G-A-A-T-T-C-G-C-G". Journal of Molecular Biology. 292 (3): 589–608. doi:10.1006/jmbi.1999.3075. PMID 10497024.
  13. ^ "RNA was a key ingredient in primordial soup that led to life". Los Angeles Times. 2013-05-20. Retrieved 2021-08-01.
  14. ^ "Iron Makes RNA Catalyze An Additional Chemical Reaction". cen.acs.org. Retrieved 2021-08-01.
  15. ^ Bray, Marcus S.; Lenz, Timothy K.; Haynes, Jay William; Bowman, Jessica C.; Petrov, Anton S.; Reddi, Amit R.; Hud, Nicholas V.; Williams, Loren Dean; Glass, Jennifer B. (2018). "Multiple prebiotic metals mediate translation". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115 (48): 12164–12169. doi:10.1073/pnas.1803636115. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 6275528. PMID 30413624.
  16. ^ "Stripping the linchpins from the life-making machine reaffirms its seminal evolution: A daring experiment corroborates translational system's place at earliest foundations of life on Earth". ScienceDaily. Retrieved 2021-08-01.
  17. ^ Okafor, C. Denise; Lanier, Kathryn A.; Petrov, Anton S.; Athavale, Shreyas S.; Bowman, Jessica C.; Hud, Nicholas V.; Williams, Loren Dean (2017). "Iron mediates catalysis of nucleic acid processing enzymes: support for Fe(II) as a cofactor before the great oxidation event". Nucleic Acids Research. 45 (7): 3634–3642. doi:10.1093/nar/gkx171. ISSN 0305-1048. PMC 5397171. PMID 28334877.

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