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Douglas Youvan

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Douglas Youvan
Douglas Youvan, United Methodist Church, Frontenac, 2010
Born1955
Frontenac, Kansas
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
Known forBiophysics of photosynthesis and evolution; discrete mathematics
Scientific career
FieldsBiophysics
InstitutionsMIT and Kairos Scientific Inc.
Doctoral studentsAdam P. Arkin, Simon Delagrave, Edward J. Bylina, Robert Mitra, Georg Fuellen
Websitewww.youvan.com

Douglas Charles Youvan (born 1955) is an American scientist.

Biography

Prior to founding Karios Scientific Inc. with Mary M. Yang, Youvan was an Associate Professor of Chemistry at MIT, and his Ph.D. degree in biophysics was from UC Berkeley. Extensive litigation over Youvan's KCAT patent for solid phase enzyme kinetics screening in microcolonies set case law in the California Supreme Court. Youvan received an Associate's degree in Electronics and a Bachelor's degree in Biology at ages 15 and 19, respectively, from Pittsburg State University.

Research focus

In his 1981 Ph.D. thesis, Youvan found inhibitors (hypermodified nucleosides) of retroviral reverse transcriptase present in ribosomal RNA.

In a 1984 publication with John E. Hearst, and in collaboration with Barry L. Marrs, Youvan published the nucleotide and deduced protein sequence for the photosynthetic reaction center – the proteins that convert light to chemical energy in photosynthetic organisms. This work correctly predicted the secondary structure of the 11 transmembrane helices of the reaction center as confirmed by X-ray crystallography. Later collaborative work with ultra-fast laser laboratories helped yield evidence for a vibrational coherence in the sub-picosecond processes of photosynthetic charge separation. International collaborative work was funded by a Human Frontier Science Program Award.

Youvan and his students have also worked in the field of combinatorial mutagenesis which can be used for directed evolution of proteins, such as enzymes. At MIT, they discovered a pattern in the genetic code that is correlated with amino acid residue hydropathy and molar volume. This observation can be compared with Frances Crick's declaration of the genetic code as being a frozen accident.

Youvan is also an inventor in the fields of digital imaging spectroscopy for absorption spectra and fluorescence, including Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET). As of 2011, his work is referenced by a number of US patents and patent applications.

References

  1. Qualters, Sheri (August 29, 2003). "Fish & Richardson stung for $30M in botched patent filing". Boston Business Journal.
  2. "From Planetary Imaging to Enzyme Screening". NASA.
  3. "Solid phase enzyme kinetics screening in microcolonies".
  4. Youvan, DC; Hearst, JE (1979). "Reverse transcriptase pauses at N2-methylguanine during in vitro transcription of Escherichia coli 16S ribosomal RNA". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 76 (8): 3751–4. doi:10.1073/pnas.76.8.3751. PMC 383911. PMID 91169.
  5. Youvan, DC; Hearst, JE (1981). "A sequence from Drosophila melanogaster 18S rRNA bearing the conserved hypermodified nucleoside am psi: analysis by reverse transcription and high-performance liquid chromatography". Nucleic Acids Research. 9 (7): 1723–41. doi:10.1093/nar/9.7.1723. PMC 326793. PMID 6164994.
  6. Youvan, DC; Bylina, EJ; Alberti, M; Begusch, H; Hearst, JE (1984). "Nucleotide and deduced polypeptide sequences of the photosynthetic reaction-center, B870 antenna, and flanking polypeptides from R. capsulata". Cell. 37 (3): 949–57. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(84)90429-X. PMID 6744416.
  7. Vos, MH; Lambry, JC; Robles, SJ; Youvan, DC; Breton, J; Martin, JL (1991). "Direct observation of vibrational coherence in bacterial reaction centers using femtosecond absorption spectroscopy". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 88 (20): 8885–9. doi:10.1073/pnas.88.20.8885. PMC 52615. PMID 1924348.
  8. "AWARD YEAR 1991 – "Molecular" Research Grants".
  9. Arkin, AP; Youvan, DC (1992). "An algorithm for protein engineering: simulations of recursive ensemble mutagenesis". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 89 (16): 7811–5. doi:10.1073/pnas.89.16.7811. PMC 49801. PMID 1502200.
  10. Delagrave, S; Goldman, ER; Youvan, DC (1993). "Recursive ensemble mutagenesis". Protein engineering. 6 (3): 327–31. doi:10.1093/protein/6.3.327. PMID 8506267.
  11. Yang, MM; Coleman, WJ; Youvan, DC (1990). ME, Michel-Beyerle (ed.). Reaction centers of photosynthetic bacteria: Feldafing-II-Meeting. Vol. 6. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. pp. 209–18. ISBN 3-540-53420-2.
  12. Füllen, G; Youvan, DC (1994). "Genetic Algorithms and Recursive Ensemble Mutagenesis in Protein Engineering". Complexity International. 1.
  13. Crick, FHC (1968). "The origin of the genetic code". J. Mol. Biol. 38 (3): 367–379. doi:10.1016/0022-2836(68)90392-6. PMID 4887876.
  14. Arkin, AP; Goldman, ER; Robles, SJ; Goddard, CA; Coleman, WJ; Yang, MM; Youvan, DC (1990). "Applications of imaging spectroscopy in molecular biology. II. Colony screening based on absorption spectra". Bio/technology (Nature Publishing Company). 8 (8): 746–9. doi:10.1038/nbt0890-746. PMID 1366901.
  15. "Calibration of Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer in Microscopy Using Genetically Engineered GFP Derivatives on Nickel Chelating Beads" (PDF).
  16. "Douglas C. Youvan Patents". Patentgenius.com. Retrieved 2011-01-07.

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