T. Haines

J. Thomas H. Haines is a Visiting Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at the Rockefeller University in New York and Professor Emeritus at the City University of New York (CUNY). Dr. Haines obtained his PhD in Biochemistry in 1965 at the Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey where he did an independent thesis on the chlorosulfolipids of Ochromonas danica. He was directly appointed Assistant Professor in the Chemistry Department of the City College of CUNY (CCNY). With immediate funding from the National Institutes of Health he established a laboratory working on the chlorosulfolipids. In 1970–1971 he established at CCNY the Sophie Davis Biomedical precursor of the CUNY Medical School at CCNY. He headed the Medical Biochemistry Division of the Medical School until retirement in 2004 receiving among others the CCNY 125th Anniversary Medal.

He works on the structure function relationship of membrane lipids. He established the unique headgroup conformation of cardiolipin which explains its role in ATP synthesis by F0F1. He showed how the lateral diffusion of chain lipids and water diffusion across the bilayer are a locked process. More recently he showed that a major role of membrane lipids is to save cellular energy. A major role of polyisoprenes is the inhibition of proton leaks across membranes; the role of plant sterols and hopanoids is the inhibition of proton leakage across membranes, and the critical function of cholesterol is to inhibit sodium ion leakage across animal plasma membranes.