Michael Cusanovich a man of many talents and inte

Authors: Terry Meyer

Publish Date: 2011/04/22

Volume: 108, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-4

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Abstract

How does one perform two or more independent tasks each crucial and timeconstrained simultaneously That was usual with Mike He was often solving scientific technical and administrative problems with colleagues on the phone while working on his dualscreened computer one for the project at hand and the other for his daily schedule To us there were seemingly not enough hours in the day to do all the work for which he volunteered His solution was to sleep less He would typically come into the lab about 6 AM working at his computer and leaving for his first meeting at about 7 or 8 As the quintessential problem solver there would be a succession of meetings with faculty staff and students and between he would be writing revising or reviewing manuscripts Emails lectures or proposals He did not eat lunch but worked straight through until 5 PM when he would finally head for home A typical day would include four meetings sometimes less but often more He was involved in everything on campus He taught a large class in biochemistry served on the faculty senate chaired a senate watchdog committee called the Committee of Eleven assisted in restructuring undergraduate education and served as faculty and research advisor to many undergraduate graduate and postdoc students At various periods he was Vice President for Research 10 years interim Provost Chair of Bioindustry of Southern Arizona and Director of Arizona Research Laboratories 22 years and maintained an active research lab throughout In 1980 he also took a leave of absence to serve as a program director at the National Science Foundation In 2005 he was awarded the highest academic honor at UA that of Regents Professor The routine was the same after his “official” retirement in 2008Mike was born in Los Angeles California March 2 1942 Mike’s father was a California State Senator from a largely Republican district and his mother a public school teacher On his mothers side he was descended from the Donner Party of pioneers perhaps that is where he got his tenacity He attended public schools graduating at age 17 and then accepted admission to the University of The Pacific on a tennis scholarship He was an outstanding athlete Without knowing I once challenged him to a game but was thoroughly trounced I tried again with racquetball where I was more proficient but with the same result I learned that Mike would not accept defeat While an undergraduate he had a number of summer jobs including preparation of solid rocket fuel While mixing the fuel dry Santa Ana winds caused a buildup of static electricity resulting in an explosion giving him severe burns over half his bodyAfter recovering from the explosion at age 21 he was among the first Chemistry graduate students at the newly formed campus of the University of California at San Diego located at the old Camp Matthews Marine Corps base in La Jolla As a firstyear student he worked in Sverdrup Hall on the campus of Scripps Institution of Oceanography which was allied with UCSD and where it was not uncommon for students to house their surfboards or fishing poles in the lab or hallway Mike was no exception to this practice as he loved surf fishing The nearby racetrack at Del Mar allowed him to engage in another interest horseracing In his second year his class moved to Bonner Hall in the newly completed Revelle College up the hill from Scripps It was a very exciting time with several Nobel laureates on campus and a cadre of wellrenowned scientists The Vietnam War led to major unrest on campus with many students and even some faculty calling for boycotts and violent action nevertheless it had little effect on research Torrey Pines Golf Course had a much greater impact on his lifeMike chose Martin Kamen an amazing scientist as advisor A year later I joined the Kamen lab quickly learning that Martin could think faster than anyone I had ever met and had a broad knowledge in all areas of science as well as being an extremely accomplished musician with a great sense of humor In 1940 Martin together with Sam Rubin discovered carbon 14 perhaps the most useful of all radioactive isotopes considering that there are more papers published on its use than for any other isotope Kamen Ann Rev Biochem 551–36 1986 Many had doubted that 14C existed at all or that it would have such a long halflife This discovery was deserving of a Nobel Prize in fact Willard Libby was given the Nobel Prize for the radiocarbon dating method using 14C in 1960 and Melvin Calvin was given the prize in 1961 for tracing the path of carbon in photosynthesis using 14C But Kamen’s discovery was made during the war years and at a time that he was labeled a possible information leak due to his gregarious nature and associations with leftists It took him more than 10 years to clear his name and regain his passportMartin had another claim to fame although not so dramatic as the discovery of 14C in that he and Leo Vernon discovered cytochrome c2 a homolog of mitochondrial cytochrome c in the nonsulfur purple bacterium Rhodospirillum rubrum which we now know has an important role in bacterial photosynthesis and respiration They also discovered cytochrome c′ one of the most commonly occurring bacterial cytochromes which to this day has an unknown functional role Martin had a very capable team in his lab including Bob Bartsch who added Chromatium vinosum high potential ironsulfur protein HiPIP and flavocytochrome c FCSD to their list of discoveries It was eventually learned that HiPIP has the same role as electron donor to reaction center in purple sulfur bacteria as does cytochrome c2 in nonsulfur purple bacteria and that FCSD functions as a sulfide dehydrogenaseIt was against this backdrop that Mike began work in the Kamen lab with guidance from Bob Bartsch He characterized the interaction of the C vinosum tetraheme reaction center cytochrome c PufC with the special pair bacteriochlorophyll at a time when it was believed to be two separate cytochromes Furthermore he investigated the effect of redox potential on the reaction It was not until Steve Kennel came to the lab and solubilized the membrane bound cytochrome with detergent and purified it that it could be shown to have four hemes in a single peptide chain Mike’s true interest was in the kinetics of biochemical reactions After earning his PhD in 1967 he went on to postdoctoral training with Quentin Gibson at Cornell University in New York There he continued studying protein interactions using a new technique stoppedflow spectroscopy which allowed measurement of binding of carbon monoxide to cytochrome c′ on the millisecond time scale Mike continued his studies with stoppedflow for the next 20 yearsAt age 27 Mike came to the University of Arizona as an assistant professor of chemistry At that time he began to develop new interests in visual pigment and muscle contraction but continued his study of bacterial cytochromes and photosynthesis He served as thesis advisor to more than 20 masters and PhD students primarily studying the mechanism of binding and oxidation/reduction of proteins and small molecules I came over in the mid1970 s to collaborate with him on the binding of nucleophiles to FCSD which is very reactive due to the unusually high redox potential of the flavin The experiments were highly successful and Mike eventually offered me a permanent position at the University of Arizona where we wrote a grant proposal to study FCSD in more detail The arrangement proved fruitful and it was also at this time that we engaged in a highly successful collaboration with Gordon Tollin a wellknown expert on flavins at the University of Arizona who had developed laser flash photolysis to study the kinetics of electron transfer reactions on a faster time domain For both of us these were our most productive research years It was Mike’s firm belief that understanding the mechanism of electron transfer required knowledge of protein structure Thus we developed collaborations with Richard Ambler and Jos Van Beeumen who studied amino acid sequences and evolution of cytochromes and other electron transfer proteins with Hazel Holden Libby Getzoff Noritake Yasuoka and Scott Mathews who determined the crystal structures of cytochrome c2 HiPIP photoactive yellow protein cytochrome c′ and FCSD

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