My Research Career
Return to Main Science Page
Return to My Research Page
Our publications
My general personal biography
.jpg)
Summary of early research
Lab life in Southampton (1967-2005) My research students Research associates Photos of my research students My CV including overseas visits
My research started with my Undergraduate Tutor, PhD Supervisor, Colleague, Friend and Hero - Len . Zatman, in the Microbiology Department, Reading University (1957 – 1966).
My PhD proect was to 'find' the enzyme responsible for the oxidation of methanol in bacteria able to grow on this substrate – special in having only a single carbon atom. Len thought it was likely to be unusual. He had worked previously on 'why does methanol cause blindness in humans'. He assumed it must be caused by the poisonous product of methanol oxidation (formaldehyde). But he found that no traditional alcohol dehydrogenase enzymes are able to oxidise methanol.
At this time there were very few papers published on bacteria able to grow on methane or methanol. None was available to us so I started by isolating bacteria on methanol. They were all pink aerobic bacteria able to grow on other substrates as well as methanol. Microbes that are able to grow on compounds with only one carbon atom [C1-compounds] such as methane, methanol, methylamine etc are now called Methylotrophs, or a sub group Methanotrophs if they grow on methane.
After one year Peter Large and J.R. Quayle in Krebs' Oxford lab published a paper describing exactly what I had done! But they could find no enzyme that oxidised methanol. Quayle then went on to become the 'Godfather' of methylotrophy.
There were are two main questions: how do they get energy from their growth substrates, and how do they assimilate the carbon? We concentrated on the first question while Quayle discovered four completely new metabolic pathways, with many novel enzymes involved in carbon assimilation.
It is now known that the methlotrophs span a huge range of organsims with widely different genetic make-ups and metabolism. All the earlier work on these microbes is described by me in The Biochemistry of Methylotrophs (Anthony 1982); PDF) and Quayle's contributions are summarised in my memoir published by the Royal Society Memoir (provided in full here).
After one year I discovered the enzyme responsible for the first step in the oxidation of methanol (methanol dehydrogenase MDH), showing it to be a new type of enzyme having a completely novel prosthetic group. The study of this was the subject of my 3 year post-doc with Len. Thirteen years later it was shown to be a novel compound called called PyrroloQuinoline Quinone [PQQ]; it was the first of a whole new family of enzymes called quinoproteins.
My main research line after moving as a lecturer to the University of Southampton was to investigate quinoproteins in general, and how energy in the form of ATP is produced by novel electron transport pathways.
My PhD was funded by University Research Scholarship (£300 p.a.). My post doc was funded to continue my PhD work by the Agriculture Research Council
The funding for my research at Southampton University has been mainly from The University, The Government Science Research Councils, The Royal Society, ICI and The Wellcome Trust
Other research topics in addition to methanol oxidation:
I worked (1966-1967) for one year in Sheffield with John Guest on regulation of the anaerobic fermentaion of glucose and glutmate in Clostridum tetanomorphum.
In my first years at Southampton I also worked on the regulation of transport of ammonia and amino acids into the mould Aspergillus (Jeff Robinson and Bob Cook).
I also collaborated on Suasan Hill's proect on aspects of micro-aerobic nitrogen fixation in bacteria (Andy Smith and Nic Juty).
We aslo worked on electron transport systems for oxidation of methylamine (Ashley Lawton and Kevin Auton).
I should emphasise that after 1967 when I say 'I' discovered things this usually refers to work by a few post docs and many excellent research students (listed below)
I was fortunate that their were two series of International Symposia, held every 2 or 3 year on 'my topics'. I attended almost all of these, usually giving a presentation:
Symposia on Microbial Growth on C1 Comounds
Symposia on PQQ and Quinoproteins
Many of these are on a page on this website
