Thomas L. James received a B.S. from the University of New Mexico and a Ph.D.
from the ... resistant to scrapie and bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
Distinguished Visitor Programme Prof Thomas L. James Chairman, Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of California, San Francisco
Biography Thomas L. James received a B.S. from the University of New Mexico and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in chemistry. Following two years of work in the chemical industry studying heterogeneous catalysis, he joined Prof. Mildred Cohn's lab to work in the area of biological nuclear magnetic resonance, a field then in its infancy. He joined the faculty at the University of California, San Francisco in 1973, where he is currently Professor of Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Chemistry, and Radiology. Since 1995, he has been Chairman of the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry. Professor James' research interests have largely, but not exclusively, entailed developing NMR methodology and applying that to biochemical and biological problems. Part of his research has entailed in vivo NMR, especially spectroscopic imaging and its use in investigating medical problems such as stroke and prostatic cancer, as well as drug toxicology. Other research exploits NMR for atomic level understanding of biological events. Major goals of this latter research have been (a) to enhance the accuracy and precision of protein and nucleic acid structures in solution determined using NMR, (b) to develop the means of describing conformational ensembles, and (c) to apply those methodologies to small moleculemacromolecule interactions and biomolecular structure and dynamics, and (d) use threedimensional nucleic acid structures and computational search algorithms to discover novel ligands. For example, the structure of the prion protein in its normal cellular form was determined. This work provided a rationale for much biological and epidemiological data on neurodegenerative prion diseases. It also enabled identification of the region of the protein susceptible to transformation to the infectious form of the prion, provided a plausible explanation for different prion disease strains, and suggested how sheep and cattle can be bred to be resistant to scrapie and bovine spongiform encephalopathy. DNA duplex structures have enabled an initial catalog of sequence-dependent features such that the detailed structure of any proposed DNA duplex can now be predicted from the growing database - certainly better than it can be predicted by molecular dynamics calculations. A novel DNA fold, a pseudosquare knot, was also discovered. RNA structure determination has yielded insights into organization of RNA in the signal recognition particle and in packaging of the HIV-1 genome. RNA structures can serve as novel targets for structure-based drug discovery. In all, he has more than 320 publications including a book NMR in Biochemistry published in 1975, and edited seven other books pertaining to NMR.
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Lecture Abstract 11 February 2004, Clinical Research Centre (CRC) Auditorium, NUS Faculty of Medicine, MD 11, 10 Medical Drive, S(117597), 6.15 pm - 7.15 pm "Mad Cows, Merging Sciences, Mighty Challenge" Mad cows are making headline news around the world. They are causing many people - from cattle ranchers to restaurant owners - to suffer economically. They are inciting national and international political and policy debates. They are scaring people who eat beef, since good evidence indicates that some people have died from eating beef infected with Mad Cow Disease, the brain disease officially known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). And, they are challenging scientists around the world to think differently and work together in new ways. To date, scientists have learned that BSE is passed from cows to humans by a novel mechanism: a protein in the BSE-infected beef causes similar, but normally "good", proteins in humans to be converted to "bad" proteins that are also infectious. This notion is striking not only because it highlights a new source of danger for human health, but also because it changes long-standing scientific dogma about how proteins behave and about how infectious disease can be spread. Our knowledge of Mad Cow Disease is due to many scientists from different disciplines, ranging from chemistry to neurology, working together to establish a new concept that applies not only to BSE but also to other deadly diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease.
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