David Wilson Deamer (born April 21, 1939) is an American biologist and Research Professor of Biomolecular Engineering at the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California syste ...

. Deamer has made significant contributions to the field of membrane biophysics. His work led to a novel method of DNA sequencing and a more complete understanding of the role of membranes in the

origin of life In biology, abiogenesis (from a- 'not' + Greek bios 'life' + genesis 'origin') or the origin of life is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothes ...

. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1985, which supported research at the Australian National University in Canberra to investigate organic compounds in the

Murchison meteorite The Murchison meteorite is a meteorite that fell in Australia in 1969 near Murchison, Victoria. It belongs to the carbonaceous chondrite class, a group of meteorites rich in organic compounds. Due to its mass (over ) and the fact that it was an ...

. He served as the president of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life from 2013 to 2014.

Early life

Deamer's father, also David, worked at

Douglas Aircraft The Douglas Aircraft Company was an American aerospace manufacturer based in Southern California. It was founded in 1921 by Donald Wills Douglas Sr. and later merged with McDonnell Aircraft in 1967 to form McDonnell Douglas; it then operated as ...

Santa Monica, California Santa Monica (; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast (California), South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 United Sta ...

, during and after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

while his mother Zena cared for Deamer and his two brothers, Richard and John. In 1952, the family moved to

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, where the three brothers attended Westerville High School. In 1957, Deamer submitted his research on self-organizing protozoa to the

Westinghouse Science Talent Search Westinghouse may refer to: Businesses Current companies *Westinghouse Electric Corporation, the company that manages the Westinghouse brand, with licensees: **Westinghouse Electric Company, providing nuclear power-related services **Westinghou ...

and was among the 40 winners who were invited to

Washington DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

that year. He was awarded a full scholarship to Duke University, where he completed a bachelor's degree in Chemistry in 1961.

Research

As a young professor at UC Davis, Deamer continued to work with

electron microscopy An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of accelerated electrons as a source of illumination. As the wavelength of an electron can be up to 100,000 times shorter than that of visible light photons, electron microscopes have a hi ...

, revealing for the first time particles related to functional ATPase enzymes within the membranes of sarcoplasmic reticulum. After spending sabbaticals in England at the University of Bristol in 1971 and with

Alec Bangham Alec Douglas Bangham FRS (10 November 1921 Manchester – 9 March 2010 Great Shelford) was a British biophysicist who first studied blood clotting mechanisms but became well known for his research on liposomes and his invention of clinically us ...

in 1975, Deamer became interested in

liposome A liposome is a small artificial vesicle, spherical in shape, having at least one lipid bilayer. Due to their hydrophobicity and/or hydrophilicity, biocompatibility, particle size and many other properties, liposomes can be used as drug deliver ...

s. Conversations with Bangham inspired his research on the role of membranes in the origin of life, and in 1985 Deamer demonstrated that the Murchison carbonaceous meteorite contained lipid-like compounds that could assemble into membranous vesicles. Deamer described the significance of self-assembly processes in his 2011 book ''First Life''. In collaborative work with Mark Akeson, a post-doctoral student at the time, the two established methods for monitoring proton permeation through ion channels such as gramicidin. In 1989, while returning from a scientific meeting in Oregon, Deamer conceived that it might be possible to sequence single molecules of DNA by using an imposed voltage to pull them individually through a nanoscopic channel. The DNA sequence could be distinguished by the specific modulating effect of the four bases on the ionic current through the channel. In 1993, he and Dan Branton initiated a research collaboration with John Kasianowitz at NIST to explore this possibility with the

hemolysin Hemolysins or haemolysins are lipids and proteins that cause lysis of red blood cells by disrupting the cell membrane. Although the lytic activity of some microbe-derived hemolysins on red blood cells may be of great importance for nutrient acqu ...

channel, and in 1996 published the first paper demonstrating that

nanopore sequencing Nanopore sequencing is a third generation approach used in the sequencing of biopolymers — specifically, polynucleotides in the form of DNA or RNA. Using nanopore sequencing, a single molecule of DNA or RNA can be sequenced without the ne ...

may be feasible. George Church at Harvard had independently proposed a similar idea, and Church, Branton and Deamer decided to initiate a patent application which was awarded in 1998. Mark Akeson joined the research effort in 1997, and in 1999 published a paper showing that the hemolysin channel, now referred to as a

nanopore A nanopore is a pore of nanometer size. It may, for example, be created by a pore-forming protein or as a hole in synthetic materials such as silicon or graphene. When a nanopore is present in an electrically insulating membrane, it can be used as ...

, could distinguish between purine and pyrimidine bases in single RNA molecules. In 2007,

Oxford Nanopore Technologies Oxford Nanopore Technologies Limited is a UK-based company which is developing and selling nanopore sequencing products (including the portable DNA sequencer, MinION) for the direct, electronic analysis of single molecules. History The company ...

(ONT) licensed the patents describing the technology and in 2014 released the MinION

device to selected researchers. The first publications appeared in 2015, one of which used the

MinION Places *Minions, Cornwall, a village in the United Kingdom People * Frank Minion (born 1929), American jazz and bop singer *Fred Minion, English professional footballer *Joseph Minion (born 1957), American film director and screenwriter *Marcus F ...

to sequence E. coli DNA with 99.4% accuracy relative to the established 5.4 million base pair genome. Despite earlier skepticism,

is now accepted as a viable third generation sequencing method.

Other publications

Deamer is also the co-author with science writer Wallace Kaufman of a sci-fi novel, The Hunt for FOXP5: A Genomic Mystery Novel (Springer, 2016). Through characters in American universities and Kazakhstani science and politics the authors explore the ethical complexity of editing human genes.

References

The Hunt for FOXP5: A Genomic Mystery Novel, Wallace Kaufman and David Deamer, Springer, 2016, {{DEFAULTSORT:Deamer, David W. 1939 births American biochemists Duke University Trinity College of Arts and Sciences alumni Living people Ohio State University College of Medicine alumni People from Santa Monica, California University of California, Davis faculty University of California, Santa Cruz faculty