Audio file: "Bounce" by Stephen Sondheim
Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics UNC Chapel Hill
Short Biography
I graduated from Yale University with the Class of 1967, with whom I remain in close contact via our google discussion group. My PhD is in Biology (1972) from UCSD for work with the crystallographer Joseph Kraut on the first crystal structure of an iron-sulfur protein containing the Fe4S4 cubane structure. Postdoctorate: Cambridge, England with Aaron Klug at the Medical Research Council Lab of Molecular Biology. Sabbatical leaves in 1986-7 with Gérard Bricogne (LURE, Orsay; supported by an NIH Fogarty Fellowship and in 2010 with Marc Delarue (Institut Pasteur; supported by a Fulbright Fellowship) greatly stimulated my more mathematical and computational interests complementary to my research interests in Chapel Hill. UNC Annual Leave Grants also supported both visits to France, where I have a secondary spiritual home.
Research
I trained as a macromolecular X-ray crystallographer. Since then, my research has contributed broadly to structural biology; experimental design; mechanistic enzymology—energetic coupling within proteins; bioinformatics; and evolutionary biology—the origin of genetic coding.
Mechanistic enzymology provided a natural trajectory. Recently that interest morphed into a broader interest in long-range allosteric communication and its role in catalysis. Details of how the aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase for tryptophan works revealed two unexpected results. Catalysis occurs if and only if two domains move relative to the active site. That domain motion is thermodynamically unfavorable unless the product PPi is released. These two gating functions turn out to be the key to converting the hydrolysis free energy of ATP into driving the acylation of tRNA.
My interest in early molecular evolution blossomed into a small cottage industry, using what we call Urzymology (Ur = primitive, original + enzyme) to develop experimental models for long-extinct ancestral catalysts. That work opened the path to in-depth pursuit of the origin of genetic coding. Those studies continue to grow into ever more surprising areas. In short, we have traced the origin of both amino acid and RNA substrate recognition to the duality of base pairing in ancestral genes. Those genes seem to have encoded different kinds of synthetase on opposite strands.
What else?
I love winter sports, especially snowshoeing and cross-country skiing. The rest of the year, I try to play both tennis and golf with limited success. I loved playing squash while I had partners at UNC. I’m outspoken in politics and my views are quite far left.
My wife, Valerie and I have two grown daughters, one in Chicago and one in Dallas. Both graduated on the same day from the Chicago Art Institute and remain active artists.
For many years I was a docent with the American Dance Festival summer program in Durham, NC. My interest in modern dance is long-standing and I once engaged a choreographer to help me build a suite of solo dances to illustrate aspects of how catalysis of nucleotide triphosphate hydrolysis allows conservation of the hydrolysis free energy and transduction into mechanical work. I performed a dress rehearsal at the Chicago Art Institute with my daughter, Emily and performed it at the annual banquet of the American Crystallographic Association in Covington KY in 2002, when I was Past President. A video of a reprise performed at the Triangle Biophysics Conference in Durham is available with a longer commentary here http://cwcarterjr.blogspot.com/2011/