Title: Divergent Reactivities of Cu in Designed Coiled Coils
Biography:
Vince Pecoraro is the John T. Groves Collegiate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In addition to his doctoral work on microbial and human iron metabolism with Ken Raymond at UC, Berkeley and postdoctoral studies on the role of metal ion catalyzed phosphoryl group transfer and metal nucleotide chemistry with Mo Cleland at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Vince’s 37-year research career at Michigan has focused on the study of metals in biology. He was one of the pioneers in small molecule modelling of manganese biochemistry, especially for the Oxygen Evolving Complex of photosystem II where he influenced significantly the discussion of structure and mechanism of the Mn4Ca cluster of this enzyme. His work in vanadium biochemistry is well respected including seminal work on the mechanism of the vanadium haloperoxidases and the application of vanadium spectroscopies to probe protein active sites. He identified the class of molecules now called metallacrowns and developed these into effective lanthanide based bioluminescent agents. Finally, he has changed the way investigators think about the field of metalloprotein design and has developed some of the most efficient de Novo metalloenzymes yet uncovered. He has also contributed significantly to the understanding of heavy metal toxicity.
Vince served as the Bioinorganic Associate Editor of Inorganic Chemistry (a position he held for nearly 21 years). In addition to being Vice-Chair of ICBIC 12 in Ann Arbor in 2005, Vince has chaired the Metals in Biology Gordon Conference and a Keystone Conference on the same subject. Most recently, in his role as President of the Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry (SBIC), he was organizer of eBIC, the first global, fully electronic conference in Bioinorganic Chemistry. Vince has served on the BMT study section at NIH, Chemistry and Biology at NSF and numerous international funding agencies such as the DFG. He was the bioinorganic representative for the ACS/Petroleum Research Fund and Chair of a committee for the advancement of underrepresented scientists for this organization. He has been the recipient of numerous honors including an Alexander von Humboldt Award to Senior Scientist (Germany), The Blaise Pascal Chair for Research (Paris), the ACS Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry, The SCF/ACS FrancoAmerican Lectureship, Le Studium Professor, the Vanadis Award, G.D. Searle Scholar and received a Doctor Honoris Causa from Aix-Marseille University. He has been elected as AAAS and ACS Fellows.