Michael G. Rossmann is a German-American physicist, microbiologist, and Hanley Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at
Purdue UniversityPurdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S., is the flagship university of the six-campus Purdue University system. Purdue was founded on May 6, 1869, as a land-grant university when the Indiana General Assembly, taking advantage of the Morrill Act, accepted a donation of land and...
who led a team of researchers to be the first to map the structure of a human
common coldThe common cold is a viral infectious disease of the upper respiratory system, caused primarily by rhinoviruses and coronaviruses. Common symptoms include a cough, sore throat, runny nose, and fever...
virus to an atomic level. He also discovered the
Rossmann foldThe Rossmann fold is a protein structural motif found in proteins that bind nucleotides, especially the cofactor NAD. The structure with two repeats is composed of six parallel beta strands linked to two pairs of alpha helices in the topological order beta-alpha-beta-alpha-beta...
protein motif.
Education
Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Michael Rossmann studied physics and mathematics at the
University of London-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
, where he received BSc and MSc degrees. He moved to
GlasgowGlasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
in 1953 where he taught physics in the technical college and received his Ph.D. in chemical crystallography in 1956. He attributes his initial interest in
crystallographyCrystallography is the experimental science of the arrangement of atoms in solids. The word "crystallography" derives from the Greek words crystallon = cold drop / frozen drop, with its meaning extending to all solids with some degree of transparency, and grapho = write.Before the development of...
to
Kathleen LonsdaleDame Kathleen Lonsdale, DBE FRS was a crystallographer, who established the structure of benzene by X-ray diffraction methods in 1929, and hexachlorobenzene by Fourier spectral methods in 1931...
, whom he heard speak as a schoolboy.
Michael Rossmann began his career as a crystallographer when he became a student of J. Monteath Robertson at the
University of GlasgowThe University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Located in Glasgow, the university was founded in 1451 and is presently one of seventeen British higher education institutions ranked amongst the top 100 of the...
. The title of his thesis was "A Study of Some Organic Crystal Structures".
In 1956 he and his family moved to the
University of MinnesotaThe University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
where he worked for two years with Professor
William N. Lipscomb, Jr.William Nunn Lipscomb, Jr. was a Nobel Prize-winning American inorganic and organic chemist working in nuclear magnetic resonance, theoretical chemistry, boron chemistry, and biochemistry.-Overview:...
, publishing on the structure of
an Iresin Diester and a
terpenoidThe terpenoids , sometimes called isoprenoids, are a large and diverse class of naturally occurring organic chemicals similar to terpenes, derived from five-carbon isoprene units assembled and modified in thousands of ways. Most are multicyclic structures that differ from one another not only in...
,
and writing computer programs for analysing structures.
He returned to the UK and to the
University of CambridgeThe University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
in 1958, where he worked with
Max PerutzMax Ferdinand Perutz, OM, CH, CBE, FRS was an Austrian-born British molecular biologist, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John Kendrew, for their studies of the structures of hemoglobin and globular proteins...
on the structure of haemoglobin. He went to Purdue in 1964.
Career
He worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the
University of MinnesotaThe University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
with Professor
William N. Lipscomb, Jr.William Nunn Lipscomb, Jr. was a Nobel Prize-winning American inorganic and organic chemist working in nuclear magnetic resonance, theoretical chemistry, boron chemistry, and biochemistry.-Overview:...
and as research associate at the
MRCThe Medical Research Council is a publicly-funded agency responsible for co-ordinating and funding medical research in the United Kingdom. It is one of seven Research Councils in the UK and is answerable to, although politically independent from, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills...
Laboratory of Molecular BiologyThe Laboratory of Molecular Biology is a research institute in Cambridge, England, which was at the forefront of the revolution in molecular biology which occurred in the 1950–60s, since then it remains a major medical research laboratory with a much broader focus.-Early beginnings: 1947-61:Max...
in Cambridge, England, where he worked with
Max PerutzMax Ferdinand Perutz, OM, CH, CBE, FRS was an Austrian-born British molecular biologist, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John Kendrew, for their studies of the structures of hemoglobin and globular proteins...
on the structure of haemoglobin. In 1964, he joined the faculty of the Department of Biological Sciences at Purdue as an associate professor and has been there since.
Michael Rossmann directs the
X-ray crystallographyX-ray crystallography is a method of determining the arrangement of atoms within a crystal, in which a beam of X-rays strikes a crystal and causes the beam of light to spread into many specific directions. From the angles and intensities of these diffracted beams, a crystallographer can produce a...
laboratory at Purdue University. He became full professor in 1967 and since 1978 has held the chair of Hanley Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at the university. He also holds joint appointment in the department of biochemistry and adjunct positions in
Cornell UniversityCornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
's Division of Biological Sciences and in
Indiana UniversityIndiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...
's school of medicine.
In 1973 Rossmann published the description of the
Rossmann foldThe Rossmann fold is a protein structural motif found in proteins that bind nucleotides, especially the cofactor NAD. The structure with two repeats is composed of six parallel beta strands linked to two pairs of alpha helices in the topological order beta-alpha-beta-alpha-beta...
, a
nucleotideNucleotides are molecules that, when joined together, make up the structural units of RNA and DNA. In addition, nucleotides participate in cellular signaling , and are incorporated into important cofactors of enzymatic reactions...
binding motif found in
enzymeEnzymes are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. In enzymatic reactions, the molecules at the beginning of the process, called substrates, are converted into different molecules, called products. Almost all chemical reactions in a biological cell need enzymes in order to occur at rates...
s such as
dehydrogenaseA dehydrogenase is an enzyme that oxidises a substrate by a reduction reaction that transfers one or more hydrides to an electron acceptor, usually NAD+/NADP+ or a flavin coenzyme such as FAD or FMN.-Examples:...
s or kinases that bind molecules such as
adenosine triphosphateAdenosine-5'-triphosphate is a multifunctional nucleoside triphosphate used in cells as a coenzyme. It is often called the "molecular unit of currency" of intracellular energy transfer. ATP transports chemical energy within cells for metabolism...
or
nicotinamide adenine dinucleotideNicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, abbreviated NAD, is a coenzyme found in all living cells. The compound is a dinucleotide, since it consists of two nucleotides joined through their phosphate groups. One nucleotide contains an adenine base and the other nicotinamide.In metabolism, NAD is involved...
.
In 1985, he published his team's mapping, using X-ray crystallography, of a human common cold virus in the journal
NatureNature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
. The breakthrough nature of this result was such that the
National Science FoundationThe National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
, which provided partial funding for the research, saw fit to organize a press conference, and the news travelled in the general press.
Awards and honors
Among other honors, Michael Rossmann has been elected Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and SciencesThe American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
in 1978, Member of the
National Academy of SciencesThe National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
in 1984, Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London in 1996, and Fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of ScienceThe American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the...
in 1999.
He was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Uppsala, Sweden; the
University of StrasbourgThe University of Strasbourg in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, is the largest university in France, with about 43,000 students and over 4,000 researchers....
, France;
Vrije Universiteit BrusselThe Vrije Universiteit Brussel is a Flemish university located in Brussels, Belgium. It has two campuses referred to as Etterbeek and Jette.The university's name is sometimes abbreviated by "VUB" or translated to "Free University of Brussels"...
, Belgium;
University of GlasgowThe University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Located in Glasgow, the university was founded in 1451 and is presently one of seventeen British higher education institutions ranked amongst the top 100 of the...
, Scotland;
University of YorkThe University of York , is an academic institution located in the city of York, England. Established in 1963, the campus university has expanded to more than thirty departments and centres, covering a wide range of subjects...
, England; Institut Armand-Frappier,
University of QuébecThe University of Quebec is a system of ten provincially-run public universities in Quebec, Canada. Its headquarters are in Quebec City. The university coordinates university programs for more than 87,000 students. It offers more than 300 programs...
, Canada.
His own employer awarded him with the Purdue University Medal of Honor in 1995.