Chakraborty selected as APS Outstanding Referee

Bulbul Chakraborty, the Enid and Nate Ancell Professor of Physics and Division Head, Sciences, School of Arts and Sciences has been selected as an 2024 Outstanding Referee by the American Physical Society.

The Outstanding Referee program was instituted in 2008 to recognize scientists who have been exceptionally helpful in assessing manuscripts for publication in the APS journals. By means of the program, APS expresses its appreciation to all referees, whose efforts in peer review not only keep the standards of the journals at a high level, but in many cases also help authors to improve the quality and readability of their articles – even those that are not published by APS.  The Outstanding Referee program annually recognizes about 150 of the roughly 91,600 currently active referees. This is a lifetime award.

53rd Rosenstiel Award awarded to Wolfgang Baumeister

The 53rd Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Research has been awarded to Wolfgang Baumeister for his pioneering work in the Development of cryo-electron tomography and for his insights into the structures and functions of the protein quality control machinery.

Dr. Baumeister’s visionary drive to find a way to study molecular machines in their native contexts has made it possible to study cells in a close-to-living state in three dimensions with resolution approaching the sub-nanometer range. This is a revolutionary advance that will allow us to understand the cellular milieu in a way never before possible. In particular, his lab has explored in near-atomic detail the proteasome complex that is responsible for the targeted degradation of proteins, and has led the way to the study of other macromolecular assemblies and their arrangement within the cell.

Professor Baumeister is Director Emeritus and Scientific Member of the Max-Planck Institute in Martinsreid, Germany. His laboratory has been at the forefront of the identification and structural analysis of the molecular machinery involved in both the proper folding and the degradation of proteins. Insights from his laboratory about a novel structural motif in some proteases has led to the development of inhibitors that block the proliferation of several cancers. More recently, his ability to locate precisely individual protein structures has made it possible to begin the description of the “molecular sociology” of proteins in specific subcellular environments such as neurons. Professor Baumeister is a Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, a Foreign Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Foreign Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is a recipient of many awards, including the Alexander Hollander Award in Biophysics and the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine. He is a member of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Steering Committee and Editor-in-Chief of Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications.

Dr. Baumeister will present his Rosenstiel Award lecture at Brandeis on April 18, 2024.

The Rosenstiel Award has had a distinguished record of identifying and honoring pioneering scientists who subsequently have been honored with the Lasker and Nobel Prizes. In 2022, the Rosenstiel Award was presented to Christine Holt and Erin Schuman. In 2021, Robert Singer was honored for his studies of the ways messenger RNAs are transcribed and transported to specific locations in the cytoplasm of cells, often far from the nucleus. In 2020, the Rosenstiel Award was the first of now many prizes conferred on Katalin Karikó and Drew Weismann for their pioneering work in the development of RNA vaccines. Karikó and Weismann received the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In 2019, David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian were honored for their identification and characterization of ion channels that enable the perception of touch, temperature and pain. Julius and Patapoutian were the 2021 Nobel laureates in Physiology and Medicine. In 2018, Stephen C. Harrison was honored for his elucidation of protein structures using x-ray crystallography. In 2017, Titia de Lange was named for her pioneering work on how cells preserve the integrity of their chromosomes. In 2016, Susan Lindquist was cited for her work on the association of protein aggregation and neurological disease. In 2015, Yoshinori Ohsumi was the recipient, for his description of protein degradation through the process of autophagy. Ohsumi was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2016. Forty of 95 Rosenstiel Award winners have subsequently been awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology or in Chemistry.

A full list of awardees can be found on the Rosenstiel Award website.

2022 Rosenstiel Award Recipients Receive 2023 Brain Prize

Christine Holt (left) and Erin Schuman (right)

Christine Holt, Professor emerita of Developmental Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and Erin Schuman, Professor of Neurobiology at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research have been named the 2023 Brain Prize Winners. Both Holt and Schuman received the Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Research award in 2022. Michael Greenberg from the Harvard Medical School also received Brain Prize. The Brain Prize is an international scientific award that honors scientists for their outstanding contribution to neuroscience.

The Lunkbeck Foundation noted that the 2023 recipients of the Brain Prize have “made ground-breaking discoveries by showing how the synthesis of new proteins is triggered in different parts of the neuron, thereby guiding brain development and plasticity in ways that impact our behaviour for a lifetime.”

The following is the program and speakers for the Brain Prize Webinar Series that will be held from October 25, 2023 through March 27, 2024. The series is online and free to attend.

Leslie Griffith, Nancy Lurie Marks Professor of Neuroscience and the Director of the Volen National Center for Complex Systems will be participating in this series on December 7, 2023.

Eve Marder receives 2023 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize

Eve Marder, University Professor and the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of Biology, has received the 2023 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize. This award recognizes outstanding women scientists.  The award was presented by Ellen V. Futter, president emerita of the American Museum of Natural History, in a ceremony at the Rockefeller University on September 20.

Marder shares the award with Lily Jan, the Jack and DeLoris Lange Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco.

Marder has also received the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience and the Gruber Prize in Neuroscience.

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Brandeis alumna elected Vice President of the International Union of Crystallography

Alumna Graciela Diaz de Delgado (Ph. D., Chemistry, 1988) was elected Vice President of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) in August 2023.  Graciela is currently Professor of Chemistry at the Universidad de los Andes in Merida, Venezuela, and is only the second person from Latin America to be elected to this position in the IUCr’s 75+ years of existence.  At Brandeis she completed her Ph. D. work in Professor Bruce Foxman’s group, where she worked on the solid-state reactions of crystalline metal complexes of trans-2-butenoate, a productive theme which continued in Bruce’s research group until his retirement. Graciela also serves the IUCr as the Chief Editor for Acta Crystallographica Section E.  Formally admitted to the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) on 7 April 1947, the IUCr remains committed to its goals of promoting international cooperation in crystallography and advancing the science, promoting international publication of crystallographic research, facilitating standardization of methods, units, nomenclatures and symbols, and forming a focus for the relations of crystallography to other sciences.  Graciela and her husband Miguel are both Professors of Crystallography at the Universidad de los Andes and have maintained highly active research programs there since 1989.  Graciela and Miguel’s son, Daniel, is currently a Ph.D. student in the Brandeis University Music Department.

Brandeis alum wins 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Drew Weissman ’81, GSAS MA’81, P’15 poses for a photo at Brandeis University on May 20, 2023. Photo/Dan Holmes

Drew Weissman ’81, GSAS MA’81, P’15, H’23 has won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.  While at Brandies, Weissman studied biochemistry and enzymology. Weissman and fellow collaborator and Nobel recipient, Katalin Karikó, H’23, received the Nobel for their research into messenger RNA. Their research led to the development of the COVID vaccinations.

In February 2021, Weissman and Karikó received the 50th Annual Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award in Basic Medical Research in February 2021.

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Biocatalysis enables access to anticancer peroxides

Chi Research Group

The Ting research group in the Department of Chemistry report the chemoenzymatic synthesis of the natural product 13-oxoverruculogen, an anticancer peroxide. Organic peroxides have a rich history in medicine as compounds such as artemisinin have saved millions of lives across the globe as a revolutionary antimalarial agent. Structurally related to that of artemisinin, verruculogens are peroxide natural products that contain a highly unusual eight-membered endoperoxide. Methods to prepare medium-sized endoperoxides are limited preventing the discovery of new medicinal peroxide analogs. The Ting group applies biocatalysis utilizing the enzyme, FtmOx1, to form the eight-membered endoperoxide ring of 13-oxoverruculogen in the penultimate step of their synthesis obviating the need for multistep modification of a sensitive peroxide. Moreover, the enzymatic reaction utilized a substrate analog that is different than the natural substrate in verruculogen biosynthesis. This work will allow for the preparation of unnatural endoperoxide analogs as potential compounds for the treatment of human diseases.

Chemoenzymatic synthesis of 13-oxoverruculogen

The Ting research group is comprised of a highly interdisciplinary team of chemistry and biochemistry students.

Authors on this project include Dr. Jun Yang (CHEM), Brandon Singh (BCBP), Gabriel Cohen (CHEM), and Prof. Chi Pan Ting (CHEM). Yang, J. † ; Singh, B. † ; Cohen, G.; Ting, C. P. “Chemoenzymatic Synthesis of 13-Oxoverruculogen” J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2023, 145, 35, 19189–19194. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.3c07078

Math Hires 1st Berger-Leighton Professor of Mathematics

This spring, the Brandeis Department of Mathematics completed their search for the first Berger-Leighton Professor of Mathematics with the hiring of Dr. Daniel Álvarez-Gavela, currently an Assistant Professor at MIT. Dr. Álvarez-Gavela will be joining Brandeis in July 2024, after staying for one more year at MIT.

This new tenure-track faculty position is the result of the generous gift by Bonnie Berger ’83, a former Brandeis trustee and the Simons Professor of Mathematics at MIT, and her husband, Dr. Tom Leighton, Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT and CEO and cofounder of Akamai Technologies. Brandeis Mathematics Chair Olivier Bernardi had this to say about the hire: “Dr. Álvarez-Gavela is a superb scholar, and an individual who embodies all the qualities that Brandeis ought to represent. Dr. Álvarez-Gavela is already collaborating with Brandeis Professor Kiyoshi Igusa on an ambitious research project aimed at importing sophisticated algebraic results (first developed by Prof. Igusa and his collaborators), to bear fruition in the context of symplectic geometry. The Math Department was unanimously enthusiastic about Dr. Álvarez-Gavela and excited to see him come and develop at Brandeis, and contribute to the renewal of the Department.”

Piasta Receives the Louis Dembitz Brandeis Prize for Excellence in Teaching

Kene Piasta, Assistant Professor of Biology, has been presented the 2023 Louis Dembitz Brandeis Prize for Excellence in Teaching. This prestigious award is given each year to a faculty member of any rank that exhibits outstanding teaching skills. Piasta was selected by Dorothy Hodgson, the Dean of Arts and Sciences based upon recommendations from a faculty committee (including previous prize recipients) and input from the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Decisions are based on student nominations, teaching evaluations, Faculty Activity Reports and CVs.

Liz Hedstrom, Professor of Biology and Chemistry and Biology Department Chair, said “Kene is a remarkable educator and an exceptionally worthy recipient of the LDB Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Kene has a gift for making dry subjects like statistics engaging without losing rigor and he somehow manages to create personal interactions in the largest introductory courses.  We are very lucky to have him at Brandeis.”

Piasta received his PhD in Biochemistry from Brandeis University in 2011.

Congratulations, Kene!

Herzfeld paper named “2023 Hot PCCP article”

In a new paper (DOI: 10.1039/d2cp05648h), selected as a “2023 Hot PCCP article”, the Herzfeld group has shown that the “Lewis dot” representation of electrons can predict states that have otherwise been predicted only by the most advanced implementations of quantum mechanics.

Basically, the structures and reactions of molecules are controlled by the interactions of electrons with each other and with atomic nuclei. However, the process is complicated by the fact that wave properties are important for particles as light as electrons. The gold standard is to explicitly model these properties using wave mechanics. But it is convenient to have an implicit description that is more accessible and intuitive. These are the “Lewis dots” that are generally used to represent bonds and reaction mechanisms in chemistry courses and journal articles. Lewis dots are semi-classical particles: classical in the sense of being associated with a location in space, but non-classical in that they don’t stick to the oppositely charged nuclei and can have two different spin states.

In recent years, the Herzfeld group has sought to quantify this picture. A subtlety is that the interactions between electrons is spin dependent due to the antisymmetry of electron wave functions. This explains why electrons of unlike spin often form pairs. However, the charges of electrons should always repel one another and Linnett suggested already in 1961 that two electrons should only co-localize if they are both sufficiently attracted to the same inter-nuclear region. In their new paper, the Herzfeld group shows that, a careful representation of the effects of wave function anti-symmetry, leads to Linnett-like structures when there are not enough internuclear basins to induce all the electrons to form simple pairs. A striking example is given by benzene. The traditional semi-classical representation of benzene, as a resonance between two structures with alternating single and double bonds, is obviated by a structure with three electrons in each carbon-carbon bond (shown here with the six carbon kernels in teal, six hydrogen kernels in white, and 15 valence electrons of each spin in pink and magenta).

Publication: Emergence of Linnett’s “double quartets” from a model of “Lewis dots.” Judith Herzfeld. Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, Issue 7, 2023.