Brian W. Matthews is a biochemist and biophysicist educated at the

University of Adelaide The University of Adelaide (informally Adelaide University) is a public research university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third-oldest university in Australia. The university's main campus is located on N ...

, contributor to x-ray crystallographic methodology at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, and since 1970 at the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc, and its co-founder, billion ...

as Professor of Physics and

HHMI The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an American non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, an American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, fil ...

investigator in the Institute of Molecular Biology. He created hundreds of mutants of

T4 lysozyme T4 or T-4 may refer to: Airports and airlines * Heathrow Terminal 4 * Tiyas Military Airbase, also known as the T-4 Airbase Biology and medicine * T4 phage, a bacteriophage * Thyroxine (T4), a form of thyroid hormone * the T4 spinal nerve * th ...

(making it the commonest structure in the PDB), determined their

structure A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...

x-ray crystallography X-ray crystallography is the experimental science determining the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the crystalline structure causes a beam of incident X-rays to diffract into many specific directions. By measuring the angles ...

and measured their melting temperatures. Starting from questions about the basis of "temperature-sensitive"

mutations In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA or viral replication, mi ...

, his work has explicated much about the general energetic and structural effects of mutations in proteins. He also solved early structures of the thermophilic bacterial enzyme

thermolysin Thermolysin (, ''Bacillus thermoproteolyticus neutral proteinase'', ''thermoase'', ''thermoase Y10'', ''TLN'') is a thermostable neutral metalloproteinase enzyme produced by the Gram-positive bacteria ''Bacillus thermoproteolyticus''. It requires ...

, the

helix-turn-helix Helix-turn-helix is a DNA-binding protein (DBP). The helix-turn-helix (HTH) is a major structural motif capable of binding DNA. Each monomer incorporates two α helices, joined by a short strand of amino acids, that bind to the major groove of D ...

DNA-binding transcription factor lambda Cro repressor, and the light-antenna bacteriochlorophyll protein. Beyond his contributions to biochemistry, Matthews is also known in the

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

community for the

Matthews correlation coefficient In statistics, the phi coefficient (or mean square contingency coefficient and denoted by φ or rφ) is a measure of association for two binary variables. In machine learning, it is known as the Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC) and used as a ...

, which he introduced in a paper in 1975. The coefficient is used as a measure of the quality of binary (two-class) classifications. Matthews has been a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

since 1986. He is the editor of the scientific journal ''

Protein Science ''Protein Science'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research on the structure, function, and biochemical significance of proteins, their role in molecular and cell biology, genetics, and evolution, and their regulation and mechan ...

''.

References

External links

Brian Matthews at The Institute of Molecular Biology at the University of OregonMolecule of the Month: Lysozyme
{{DEFAULTSORT:Matthews, Brian 1938 births Living people University of Adelaide alumni Australian biochemists Australian biophysicists Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences University of Oregon faculty Howard Hughes Medical Investigators