A tribute to Thomas Roosevelt Punnett, Jr. (1926-2008)

We honor here Thomas (Tom) Roosevelt Punnett, Jr. (May 25, 1926–July 4, 2008), who was a pioneer of Biology, particularly of biochemistry of plants and algae, having specialized in photosynthesis under Robert Emerson of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He did exciting work on regulation and control of various metabolic reactions. He was an innovator and raconteur par excellence, and he prized critical thinking. His enthusiasm for basic science questions was matched by his grasp of their “real-world” implications. His last project was a patent for anaerobic sewage treatment that he hoped would lead to solution of waste disposal and energy creation world wide, including the clean-up of Lake Erie, where he had sailed as a boy. On the personal side, he had a strong sense of morality and a great wit and humor.     

William E. Vidaver (1921–2017): an innovator,enthusiastic scientist,inspiring teacher and a wonderful friend

William (Bill) E. Vidaver (February 2, 1921–August 31, 2017), who did his Ph.D. with Laurence (Larry) R. Blinks at Stanford (1964) and a postdoc with C. Stacy French (1965), taught and did research at Simon Fraser University (SFU) for almost 30 years. Here he published over 80 papers in photosynthesis-related areas co-authored by his graduate students, postdocs, visiting professors and SFU colleagues. He developed a unique high-pressure cuvette for the study of oxygen exchange and studied high-pressure effects in photosynthesis. Ulrich (Uli) Schreiber, as a postdoctoral fellow from Germany, introduced measurements on chlorophyll (Chl) a fluorescence to Bill’s lab, leading to the discovery of reversible inhibition of excitation energy transfer between photosynthetic pigments and of a pivotal role of O₂ in the oxidation of the electron transport chain between Photosystem II (PS II) and PS I. Bill’s and Uli’s work led to a patent of a portable chlorophyll fluorometer, the first available commercially, which was later modified to measure whole plantlets. The latter was used in pioneering measurement of the health of forest and crop plants undergoing in vitro clonal micropropagation. With several other researchers (including Doug Bruce, the late Radovan Popovic, and Sarah Swenson), he localized the quenching site of O₂ and showed a dampening effect on measurements of the four-step process of O₂ production by endogenous oxygen uptake. Bill is remembered as a hard-working but fun-loving person with a keen mind and strong sense of social justice.     

Stories and photographs of William A. Arnold (1904–2001), a pioneer of photosynthesis and a wonderful friend

William A. Arnold discovered many phenomena in photosynthesis. In 1932, together with Robert Emerson, he provided the first experimental data that led to the concept of a large antenna and a few reaction centers (photosynthetic unit); in 1935, he obtained the minimum quantum requirement of 8–10 for the evolution of one O₂ molecule; in 1951, together with Bernard L. Strehler, he discovered delayed fluorescence (also known as delayed light emission) in photosynthetic systems; and in 1956, together with Helen Sherwood, he discovered thermoluminescence in plants. He is also known for providing a solid-state picture of photosynthesis. Much has been written about him and his research, including many articles in a special issue of Photosynthesis Research (Govindjee et al. (eds.) 1996); and a biography of Arnold, by Govindjee and Srivastava (William Archibald Arnold (1904–2001), 2014), in the Biographical Memoirs of the US National Academy of Sciences, (Washington, DC). Our article here offers a glimpse into the everyday life, through stories and photographs, of this remarkable scientist.     

On the requirement of minimum number of four versus eight quanta of light for the evolution of one molecule of oxygen in photosynthesis: A historical note

A bitter controversy had existed as to the minimum number of quanta required for the evolution of one molecule of oxygen in photosynthesis: Otto Warburg had insisted since 1923 that this value was 3–4, whereas Robert Emerson and others continued to obtain a value of 8–12 since the 1940s. It is shown in this letter that the 1931 Nobel-laureate of Physiology & Medicine Otto Warburg published, in his last and final paper, just before his death in 1970, a measured minimum quantum requirement of oxygen evolution of 12 at the lowest intensities of light he used. Although using his theory on photolyte, Warburg calculated a value of 3–4 for the quantum requirement, this is the first confirmation by Warburg of the higher measured quantum requirement. However, it has remained unknown to most investigators. It is expected that this information will be of general interest not only to those interested in the history and research on photosynthesis, but to the entire sci entific community, especially the writers of text books in biology, biochemistry and biophysics.     

Vintages and Traditions: An Ethnohistory of Southwest French Wine Cooperatives

Vintages and Traditions: An Ethnohistory of Southwest French Wine Cooperatives. Robert C. Ulin. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996. 300 pp.     

Historical review of the discovery of cadherin,in memory of Tokindo Okada

The cadherin family of cell–cell adhesion molecules plays a pivotal role in animal tissue formation. Discovery of this molecular family can be traced back to some unexpected observations of strange cell behavior that were made around 1970 in the Kyoto University laboratory of Tokindo Okada, and then in the Department of Embryology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington (currently the Carnegie Institution for Science). This article looks back on these discoveries, and recalls how these observations led to the identification of important cell‐cell adhesion molecules known as cadherins.     

Characterization of electrophoretically cryptic variation in the alpine butterfly Colias meadii

Enzyme polymorphism was characterized among the proteins of 14 loci of Coliae meadii by replicate electrophoresis in polyacrylamide gels of differing pore size. The results reveal a large number of variants, with a very skewed frequency distribution. A large fraction of the variants cannot be differentiated by electrophoresis in 5–7% acrylamide gels. This gel sieving approach permits an estimate of the relative contributions of charge and of conformation to electrophoretic mobility. Many of the variant proteins do not differ in charge. Most variants exhibit different degrees of interaction with the gel and presumably differ in conformation.This work was supported by grants from Washington University, the American Philosophical Society, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation. Analysis was developed and carried out while the author was a Carnegie Institution of Washington Fellow.Carnegie Institution of Washington Department of Plant Biology Publication No. 569.     

The controversy over the minimum quantum requirement for oxygen evolution

During the early- to mid-twentieth century, a bitter controversy raged among researchers on photosynthesis regarding the minimum number of light quanta required for the evolution of one molecule of oxygen. From 1923 until his death in 1970, Otto Warburg insisted that this value was about three or four quanta. Beginning in the late 1930s, Robert Emerson and others on the opposing side consistently obtained a value of 8–12 quanta. Warburg changed the protocols of his experiments, sometimes in unexplained ways, yet he almost always arrived at a value of four or less, except eight in carbonate/bicarbonate buffer, which he dismissed as “unphysiological”. This paper is largely an abbreviated form of the detailed story on the minimum quantum requirement of photosynthesis, as told by Nickelsen and Govindjee (The maximum quantum yield controversy: Otto Warburg and the “Midwest-Gang”, 2011); we provide here a scientific thread, leaving out the voluminous private correspondence among the principal players that Nickelsen and Govindjee (2011) examined in conjunction with their analysis of the principals’ published papers. We explore the development and course of the controversy and the ultimate resolution in favor of Emerson’s result as the phenomenon of the two-light-reaction, two-pigment-system scheme of photosynthesis came to be understood. In addition, we include a brief discussion of the discovery by Otto Warburg of the requirement for bicarbonate in the Hill reaction.     

Chris Somerville

Chris Somerville is Director of the Carnegie Institution Department of Plant Biology and a professor of Biological Sciences at Stanford University. He grew up in the Canadian north and was educated at the University of Alberta. He was one of the early Arabidopsis enthusiasts and has used the plant to study a variety of topics in cell and molecular biology. He is currently exploring the complexities of plant cell wall biogenesis.     

Changing concepts about the distribution of Photosystems I and II between grana-appressed and stroma-exposed thylakoid membranes

Thylakoid membranes of higher plants and some green algae, which house the light-harvesting and energy transducing functions of the chloroplast, are structurally unique. The concept of the photosynthetic unit of the 1930s (Robert Emerson, William Arnold and Hans Gaffron), needing one reaction center per hundreds of antenna molecules, was modified by the discovery of the Enhancement effect in oxygen evolution in two different wavelengths of light (Robert Emerson and his coworkers) in the late 1950s, followed by the 1960 Z scheme of Robin Hill and Fay Bendall. It was realized that two light reactions and two pigment systems were needed for oxygenic photosynthesis. Changing ideas about the distribution of Photosystem II (PS II) and PS I between the green-appressed and stroma-exposed thylakoid membrane domains, which led to the concept of lateral heterogeneity, are discussed. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Shigeo Yamanouchi (1876–1973): A noted Japanese phycologist

Dr Shigeo Yamanouchi was born in Yamagata Prefecture and completed his secondary education at Tokyo Higher Normal School (THNS) where he was also a professor until 1904. In 1905, he went to the University of Chicago in the USA and earned a PhD in Botany in 1907. He is best noted for his excellent research on the cytology and life histories of the marine algae Polysiphonia, Fucus, Cutleria, Aglaozonia and Zanardinia, published between 1906 and 1921 while he was associated with the University of Chicago. He also described the freshwater green alga Hydrodictyon africanum. In 1910, he returned to THNS as a Professor and wrote several botanical textbooks, receiving his DSc degree in 1911 and traveling in England and the USA as an advisor for the Japanese Ministry of Education during 1911–1913. For much of the time between 1920 and 1942 he remained in the USA, returning to Japan following the advent of World War II, During his later life, he was in obscurity, and sadly there is very little recorded of his activities in the post-war years. He died in Tokyo on 2 February 1973 at the age of 96.     

Jonathon Howard.

Jonathon 'Joe' Howard (Fig. 1) is Group Leader and Director at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics; he and his research group moved to Dresden, Germany, in July 2001. Howard received his PhD in neurobiology in 1983 from the Australian National University in Canberra. He did postdoctoral research there and also at the University of Bristol, UK, and at the University of California, San Francisco. In 1989, he joined the faculty at the University of Washington. His book "Mechanics of Motor Proteins and the Cytoskeleton" was published earlier this year. [interview by Mari N. Jensen]     

Philip Cohen

Philip Cohen trained at University College London and, after postdoctoral research at the University of Washington, joined the University of Dundee Scotland, in 1971, where he has worked ever since. He is a Royal Society Research Professor and Director of the Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation Unit. His main contributions have been in the area of protein phosphorylation and its role in cell regulation and human disease. In 1998, he was knighted for his contributions to biochemistry and the development of Life Sciences at Dundee.     

A biographical sketch of Charles F. Yocum: “It's the biochemistry, stupid”

Charles F. Yocum has been a leader in the applications of biochemical techniques to the resolution and reconstitution of Photosystem II. His formal science education began as an undergraduate in biochemistry at Iowa State University and continued with graduate work in photosynthesis, first at the Illinois Institute of Technology and later at Indiana University. Following postdoctoral work at Cornell University, he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan where he has remained throughout his academic career. Charlie's contributions to a biochemical understanding of photosynthesis, particularly Photosystem II have been considerable, but most notably include his initial isolation of the first highly active oxygen-evolving particle from higher plant chloroplasts, the well-known and widely utilized `BBY particles'. In the aftermath of that isolation, Charlie's research further resolved these particles into ever finer and simpler, but active, Photosystem II complexes. In addition, Charlie's research has provided significant insight into the roles of both Cl⁻ and Ca²⁺ as required cofactors in photosynthetic oxygen evolution. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Q & A. [interview

Elaine and Gary Ostrander spent their youth in New Jersey and New York before heading to Nebraska for their teen years and eventually Washington State for High School and college, as their father moved around in library administration. Elaine was an undergraduate at the University of Washington, a graduate student at the Oregon Health Sciences University and a postdoc with James Wang at Harvard, studying DNA supercoiling. She next went to Berkeley, where she began the canine genome project, initiating the meiotic linkage map and working on human chromosome 21 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. In 1993 she moved to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center where she is now a Member of the Divisions of Clinical Research and Human Biology. She is also an Affiliate Professor of Genome Sciences and Biology at the University of Washington, and heads the Program in Genetics at the Hutchinson Center. Gary completed his undergraduate degree in Biology at Seattle University, a M.S. degree at Illinois State University and a Ph.D at the University of Washington in Ocean and Fisheries Science. He went on to be a postdoc in the Department of Pathology at the University of Washington Medical School while being mentored by Senitroh Hakomori of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Eric Holmes of the Pacific Northwest Research Foundation. His work focused on using novel aspects of the biology of fishes to address fundamental questions about cancer. He subsequently held both faculty and administrative positions at Oklahoma State University. Since 1996, he has been at the Johns Hopkins University, where he currently holds academic appointments in the Departments of Biology and Comparative Medicine and is the Associate Provost for Research.     

Pavel Siffel (1954–2003) or Life full of chlorophyll

Life and research results of Pavel Siffel, a talented but untimely deceased Czech scientist in photosynthesis, are reviewed. He studied biophysics and physiology of chlorophyll, its complexes with proteins, their absorption and fluorescence spectra, activities in mutants and transformants, dealt with chlorophyll biosynthesis and protochlorophyllide photoreduction, pigments in plants grown at CO₂ deficiency and under simulated acid rain, with changes accompanying leaf and plant development, photobleaching, etc. He participated in construction of specialised spectrofluorometers, finally he built the kinetic spectrophotometer SpeKin.     

Bones in the Basement: Postmortem Racism in Nineteenth-Century Medical Training

Bones in the Basement: Postmortem Racism in Nineteenth-Century Medical Training. Robert L. Blakely and Judith M. Harrington. eds. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998.380 pp.     

Youthful Vigor and Mature Realism in Ceramic Studies

The Emergence of Pottery: Technology and Innovation in Ancient Societies. William K. Barnett and John W. Hoopes. eds. Smithsonian Series in Archaeological Inquiry. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996. 286 pp.
The Social Dynamics of Pottery Style in the Early Puebloan Southwest. Michelle Hegmon. Cortez, CO. Crow Canyon Archaeological Center (distributed by University of Arizona Press), 1995. 272 pp.