As editors of BBA, we attempt to assemble Special Issues of the Journal featuring reviews (and sometime original research articles) of developing fields of research in biochemistry, biophysics and cell biology. We thought it would be a unique idea to have a Special Issue that would feature the Executive Editors of BBA who are outstanding scientists in their respective fields. We decided that this Special Issue would best fit into the General Section of BBA since the papers in that section are targeted to a broader scientific readership. Photos and short biographies of the BBA Executive Editors follow. As you will see, our Executive Editors come from Asia, North America, and Europe attesting to the international perspective of BBA. This is also reflected in the Editorial Boards of each section of BBA.
Elias Arnér is an M.D., Ph.D. and received his degrees from Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. In his early work, he studied nucleotide metabolism and the biochemistry of nucloside analogs used as anticancer or antiviral drugs. Later he moved to studies of redox biochemistry, with a focus on the mammalian thioredoxin system and selenoprotein synthesis and function. With that field of interest, he first worked with Arne Holmgren, Stockholm, and then August Böck, Munich, before establishing his own line of research back at Karolinska Institutet, where he is now head of the biochemistry division in the department of medical biochemistry and biophysics. He has served as dean of postgraduate education at Karolinska Institutet and he was the Editor of BBA General Subjects for some years before becoming an Executive Editor in 2008.
Ulrich Brandt is a professor of biochemistry and molecular bioenergetics at the Centre for Biological Chemistry in Frankfurt am Main. He graduated in biochemistry from the Eberhard-Karls University in Tübingen and obtained his Ph.D. from the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich for his research on specific inhibitors of the mitochondrial cytochrome bc1 complex and functional aspects of cytochrome c oxidase.
Peter Brzezinski obtained his Ph.D. at Göteborg University in Sweden in 1989. He then moved to UCSD in La Jolla to work as a postdoctoral fellow with George Feher at the Physics Department. In 1991, he became an assistant professor at Göteborg University and in 1999 he assumed a professorship at Stockholm University. Peter has worked as the Executive Editor of Biochim. Biophys. Acta - Bioenergetics and as a Handling Editor of FEBS Lett since 2003. In 2007, he was elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Paul F. Cook received a B.A. in biology and chemistry in 1972 from Our Lady of the Lake College in San Antonio, Texas, and the Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1976 from the University of California at Riverside, where he worked with Randolph T. Wedding on the mechanisms of the cysteine biosynthetic enzymes in Salmonella. He carried out postdoctoral research on isotope effects in enzyme-catalyzed reactions with W. W. Cleland at the University of Wisconsin, and in 1980, he took a position as an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry, and moved to the Department of Biochemistry at the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1982.
William Dowhan
Research Interests
Structure, function and assembly of cell membranes. A combined molecular genetic and biochemical approach is being used to study the structure, function, and biogenesis of biological membranes in prokaryotic (E. coli) and eukaryotic (yeast) microorganisms. Studies utilizing E. coli focus on understanding biological processes that are similar in both simple and complex organisms. A major goal is to understand the role individual phospholipid species and general membrane phospholipid composition play in cell function. Specific roles for phospholipids at the molecular level have been defined for translocation of proteins across membranes, energy transduction processes, signal transduction, cell division, and the assembly and function of integral membrane proteins. A major emphasis is to understand how membrane proteins interact with their lipid environment to attain final topological organization.
Richard M. Epand is currently a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Epand received his A.B. from the Johns Hopkins University and his Ph.D. in the Department of Biochemistry of Columbia University under the direction of Professor I.B. Wilson. Richard Epand then did postdoctoral studies with Professor Harold Scheraga at Cornell University and with Professor Leloir at the Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquimicas in Buenos Aires. Dr. Epand has held academic positions at the University of Guelph before joining McMaster.
Paul Fraser is professor of medical biophysics and holds the Diener Chair in Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of Toronto. Professor Fraser's group has been working for a number of years to determine the physical organization and the mechanisms by which the amyloid proteins are assembled into oligomeric and fibrillar structures. This research is being correlated with functional studies to ascertain, for example, to the toxicity of the amyloid-β (Aβ) peptide to provide a comprehensive analysis of the contribution of amyloid plaques to Alzheimer pathogenesis.
Carl G. Gahmberg - Born in Helsinki, Finland, December 1, 1942. M.D. University of Helsinki 1968, Dr. Med. Sci. 1971. Postdoctoral fellow, University of Washington, 1972–1974. Professor of biochemistry, Åbo Akademi University 1979-1981; professor of biochemistry, University of Helsinki, 1981–present. Academy professor, Academy of Finland 1986-1991. Member of EMBO, 1980; Finnish Academy of Sciences, 1982; Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, 1983; World Cultural Council, 1984; Academia Europaea, 1989. Honorary member of World Innovation Foundation, 2003. Foreign member of The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 2007. Foreign member of The Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Göteborg 2008.
Dr. Goto graduated from the Department of Biology, Osaka University (1977), and obtained a Doctoral Degree (1982) from the Graduate School of Science, Osaka University. He stayed at the Medical School of Tokushima University (1982-1984), Graduate School of Science, Osaka University (1984-1998) before joining the Institute for Protein Research as a professor in 1998. He experienced postdoctoral period in 1986–1988 with Prof. Anthony Fink, UC Santa Cruz. During his postdoctoral period, he performed pioneering work on understanding the salt-dependent conformational change of denatured proteins and molten globule states.
Dr. William C. Hahn is a medical oncologist and associate professor in the Department of Medical Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a Senior Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He directs the Center for Cancer Genome Discovery at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Dr. Hahn and his colleagues helped demonstrate that activation of the reverse transcriptase telomerase plays an essential role in malignant transformation. His current work focuses on the understanding of the cooperative genetic interactions that lead to malignant transformation and the creation of novel experimental model systems for the study of normal and malignant epithelial biology. In addition, he is a founding member of The RNAi Consortium, Broad Institute-based effort to develop genome scale RNA interference reagents and the technologies for their use.
Jeffrey Keller Professor, Associate Executive Director of Basic Research, Hibernia National Bank/Edward G. Schlieder Chair, and Director of the newly established Institute for Dementia Research & Prevention at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, LSU System, Baton Rouge Louisiana.
Dr. Keller received his Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology at the University of Kentucky in 1999. Since that time, Dr. Keller's efforts have been focused on studying aging, oxidative stress, proteasome biology, and Alzheimer's disease research. The work of Dr. Keller in the last 2 years has been focused on understanding the ability of a high fat diet to modulate brain function and brain pathology during aging. In particular, we are interested on the ability of these high fat diets to accelerate brain aging and promote the development of age-related neurodegenerative diseases.
Dr. Krag received a B.S. in chemistry and biology from Texas Lutheran College, received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Johns Hopkins University, and completed postdoctoral work at the Center for Cancer Research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She joined the faculty of the Department of Biochemistry at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 1976. She was the Associate Dean for Graduate Education and Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health from 1992 through 2007. She is currently a professor in the Bloomberg's School Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Her research focuses on glycobiology; in particular, her lab studied lipid intermediates (dolichol) in N-linked glycosylation, an important process in cell-surface interactions.
Dr. Friedrich Lottspeich The primary focus of the Lottspeich group is in method development in protein analytics and proteomics. Mass spectrometry, amino acid sequencing, protocols for sample preparation and improved and more sensitive protein identification methods by mass spectrometry are established. Recently, ICPL (Isotope coded protein label) has been developed as a powerful tool to identify and relatively quantify thousands of proteins within complex protein mixtures. All these techniques are directly used in many collaborative projects within the institute, with universities and Max-Planck-Institutes throughout Germany. One biological research project is the Hypusin containing protein, its structure-function relationship and the elucidation of the function of this higly conserved protein. The goal of the MONACO project focuses on the mode of action of new lead compounds for drug discovery from natural sources related to tradititional chinese medicine.
Dr. Ben A. Oostra is a professor of molecular and clinical genetics at the Erasmus MC of the Erasmus University. He received his M.Sc. in 1977 and his Ph.D. in 1981 in biochemistry from Groningen University, The Netherlands. He completed postdoctoral fellowships at the National Institute of Medical Research, Mill Hill, London U.K. and at the Laboratory for Medical Biochemistry, Leiden University prior to accepting the position at the Erasmus University in 1985. His research focuses first on genetic molecular and biochemical studies in neurogenetic disorders and second on the genetics of complex disorders with a specific interest in isolated populations.
Craig L. Peterson is a tenured professor and Vice-Chair in the Program in Molecular Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He received his B.S. in molecular biology from the University of Washington in 1983 and his Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1988. As a Helen Hay Whitney Foundation postdoctoral fellow with the late Ira Herskowitz at the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Peterson initiated genetic studies that ultimately led to the discovery of the first chromatin remodeling enzyme, yeast SWI/SNF. He joined the faculty of the Program in Molecular Medicine in 1992 where he has pioneered genetic and biochemical analyses of chromatin remodeling enzymes, chromatin higher order folding, and the role of chromatin dynamics in transcription, DNA repair, and DNA replication.
Nikolaus Pfanner studied medicine in Munich and was trained in biochemistry and molecular cell biology in the laboratories of Walter Neupert (Munich, Germany) and James Rothman (Princeton, New Jersey). Since 1992 he has been a professor and Chairman of Biochemistry at the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Freiburg, Germany. His research interests include the mechanisms of intracellular protein sorting and assembly, and the function and biogenesis of mitochondria. He is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the Academia Europaea, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and, the Academy of Sciences Heidelberg. Nikolaus Pfanner has received the Max Planck Research Award, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Award, and the Leopoldina Research Award.
Jean-Marie Ruysschaert received his master degree and Ph.D. in chemistry from the Free University of Brussels. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Cambridge University (U.K.), Weizmann Institute of Sciences (Israel), and Carnegie Institute (Baltimore, MD). He then joined the Department of Chemistry at the Free University of Brussels where he created the laboratory for Chemistry and Physics of Macromolecules at the Interfaces. Since 1999, he is the Director of the Center for Structural Biology and Bioinformatics (Brussels, Belgium).
He has authored 380 articles, reviews, and monographies in international journals. His research interest is mainly focused on the structures and activities of membrane components (lipid, proteins).
Friedrich Spener received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Graz in Austria in 1968, where he carried out a thesis on the intestinal absorption of long-chain triethers of glycerol. After two and a half years of postdoctoral work at the Hormel Institute of the University of Minnesota in the United States he joined first the Federal Institute for Lipid Research in Münster, Germany. Then, he made his career in lipid biochemistry and biotechnology at the University of Münster, where he was Professor of Biochemistry until his retirement there in 2004. He was asked subsequently to join the University of Graz and the Medical University of Graz to develop the Lipidomics Research Center as a joint platform for the strong lipid community in Graz. The scientific work of Professor Spener is published in over 280 original contributions, reviews and book chapters as well as in several patents.
Steven J. Triezenberg is the Director of the Van Andel Education Institute, Dean of the Van Andel Institute Graduate School, and a scientific investigator in the Van Andel Research Institute, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Dr. Triezenberg received his bachelor's degree in biology and education at Calvin College. His Ph.D. training in cell and molecular biology at the University of Michigan was followed by postdoctoral research at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Before joining the Van Andel Institute in 2006, Dr. Triezenberg was a faculty member of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Michigan State University for more than 18 years. His research explores the regulation of gene expression, with current projects studying events during herpes simplex virus infections and in the response of plants to low temperature.
Dennis E. Vance is a professor of biochemistry at the University of Alberta. He did his Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh supervised by Charles Sweeley. He did postdoctoral training at Harvard University with Konrad Bloch. He was a professor and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of British Columbia (1982–86) and Associate Dean of Medicine (1978–81). He moved to the University of Alberta in 1986 to establish a Lipid Research Group. He is currently Director of the SCOLAR (Stroke, Cardiovascular, Obesity, Lipid, Atherosclerosis Research) Training Program from CIHR and the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. He has served on CIHR committees, including Chair of the Metabolism Committee. He is the principal investigator on three grants from CIHR.
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