Biography of José N. Onuchic
Biography of José N. Onuchic
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何塞·N·奥努奇的传记
DOI：
10.1021/acs.jpcb.3c05233
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发表时间：
2023
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Cheung, Margaret S.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Morcos, Faruck;Whitford, Paul C.;Cheung, Margaret S.
莱斯大学的生物科学。他也是理论生物物理中心和德克萨斯州癌症预防和研究所(CPRIT)学者的联席主任。从历史上看，理解支配生命过程的潜在机制一直是一项实验性的努力。然而，在过去的几十年里，奥努契奇博士一再表明，要在如此复杂的问题上取得进展，需要理论和实验之间的协同作用。奥努契奇教授在巴西的São Carlos长大，从小就对科学和数学表现出浓厚的兴趣。他的父母都是圣保罗大学(University de são Paulo)的数学教授。他在同一所学院接受大学教育，在那里他获得了电气工程学士学位(1980)和物理学士学位(1981)，随后又获得了应用物理硕士学位(1982)。出于理解生命科学和物理科学之间的问题的目标，Onuchic教授后来转到加州理工学院(Caltech)，在John Hopfield教授的指导下获得博士学位。在加州理工学院毕业后，他回到São Carlos担任了几年的助理教授，然后回到美国，在加州大学圣地亚哥分校(UCSD)担任物理系助理教授，在那里他建立了一个理论生物物理学小组。Onuchic教授的研究重点是分子生物物理学、凝聚体中的化学反应、基因组结构、基因表达、基因网络和癌症理论模型的理论和计算方法。他在博士期间和早年担任教授期间的第一项科学贡献集中在生物分子中的电子转移反应理论上。这些反应是动物(呼吸作用)和植物(光合作用)生物能量途径的中心。这项工作的主要成果之一是准确地预测了蛋白质中供体和受体位置之间的电子耦合性质。这是因为他发展了一种理论框架来定量理解蛋白质中的电子隧道效应，这为设计能够进行电子转移反应的蛋白质提供了一种新的方法。蛋白质折叠可能是Onuchic教授最知名的领域。他的研究小组引入了蛋白质折叠漏斗的概念，以显示可以折叠成独特蛋白质结构的氨基酸序列的类型。他的理论进步指导了大部分的实验
Biosciences at Rice University. He is also the co-Director of the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics and a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) Scholar. Understanding the underlying mechanisms governing life processes has been, historically, an experimental effort. In the last decades, however, Dr. Onuchic has repeatedly shown how synergistic interactions between theory and experiments are needed to achieve progress in such complex problems. Prof. Onuchic grew up in São Carlos, Brazil, where from an early age he demonstrated an interest in science and mathematics. Both of his parents were professors of mathematics at the Universidade de São Paulo (USP). He pursued his college education at the same institution, where he obtained bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering (1980) and physics (1981), followed by a master’s in applied physics (1982).Toward his goal of understanding problems at the interface of the life and physical sciences, Prof. Onuchic then moved to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) where he earned his Ph. D. under the supervision of Prof. John Hopfield. After Caltech, he returned to São Carlos as an assistant professor for a few years before returning to the United States as an assistant professor in the physics department at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where he established a theoretical biological physics group. Prof. Onuchic’s research focuses on theoretical and computational methods for molecular biophysics, chemical reactions in condensed matter, genome structure, gene expression, gene networks, and theoretical modeling of cancer. His first scientific contributions during his Ph. D. and early years as a professor focused on the theory of electron transfer reactions in biomolecules. These reactions are central to the bioenergetic pathways of both animals (respiration) and plants (photosynthesis). One of the main achievements of this effort has been the accurate prediction of electronic coupling properties between the donor and acceptor sites in proteins. This was enabled by his development of a theoretical framework to quantitatively understand electron tunneling in proteins, which provided a new way to design proteins that are competent for electron transfer reactions. Protein folding is probably the area for which Prof. Onuchic is most well-known. His research group introduced the concept of protein-folding funnels to show the types of amino acid sequences that can fold into unique protein structures. His theoretical advances have guided much of the experimental