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Victor Ginsburg, the early years
ABB Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics 426 (2004) 105 www.elsevier.com/locate/yabbi
Personal Note
Victor Ginsburg, the early years Victor Ginsburg and I were contemporary graduate students under W. Zev Hassid, in the Department of Plant Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. I remember him as very bright, outgoing, funny, and irreverent. His wife, Ann, a graduate student when he married her in 1955, recalls his fondness for practical jokes. At a memorable Christmas party, he led us in a song spoofing the director of the Virus Lab (he had modified a ditty from Gilbert and SullivanÕs ‘‘HMS Pinafore’’), which had some lasting repercussions. After working on the metabolism of xylose and L -arabinose in plants for his Ph.D., which he obtained in 1955, Vic saw the need to explore sugar nucleotides as possible metabolic intermediates. He isolated UDP derivatives of glucose, galactose, xylose, and L -arabinose from extracts of mung beans (he even invented a special fraction collector for the purpose, with no moving parts). He then invited me to join him, and in a few months of intense but exhilarating work, we had found pyrophosphorylases and epimerases, several of them novel, that would catalyze the synthesis of these sugar nucleotides. But this wonderful collaboration had to stop because Vic was leaving; he had been offered a job by Herman Kalckar, who had just moved to the National Institutes of Health. We had many conversations about his future research plans and discussed a search for UDP–L -fucose, which, I assured him, was certain to be productive. Imagine everyoneÕs surprise when he found not UDP- but GDP–L -fucose! He promptly worked out the biosynthesis of this sugar nucleotide from GDP–mannose. These were classic discoveries that paved the way for much of glycobiology. Vic was instrumental in my recruitment to the NIH in 1963, and he served as my unofficial mentor for some years. We jointly edited a volume on carbohydrates (volume 8) for Methods in Enzymology, which we dedicated to Luis Leloir to acknowledge our intellectual debt to the pioneer of sugar nucleotides. After a while our research interests diverged, but Vic remained a good friend and supportive colleague, and interacting with him was always fun and a great learning experience. Elizabeth F. Neufeld David Geffen School of Medicine Department of Biological Chemistry University of California Los Angeles, CA, USA Available online 10 May 2004
0003-9861/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.abb.2004.04.006
Personal Note
Victor Ginsburg, the early years Victor Ginsburg and I were contemporary graduate students under W. Zev Hassid, in the Department of Plant Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. I remember him as very bright, outgoing, funny, and irreverent. His wife, Ann, a graduate student when he married her in 1955, recalls his fondness for practical jokes. At a memorable Christmas party, he led us in a song spoofing the director of the Virus Lab (he had modified a ditty from Gilbert and SullivanÕs ‘‘HMS Pinafore’’), which had some lasting repercussions. After working on the metabolism of xylose and L -arabinose in plants for his Ph.D., which he obtained in 1955, Vic saw the need to explore sugar nucleotides as possible metabolic intermediates. He isolated UDP derivatives of glucose, galactose, xylose, and L -arabinose from extracts of mung beans (he even invented a special fraction collector for the purpose, with no moving parts). He then invited me to join him, and in a few months of intense but exhilarating work, we had found pyrophosphorylases and epimerases, several of them novel, that would catalyze the synthesis of these sugar nucleotides. But this wonderful collaboration had to stop because Vic was leaving; he had been offered a job by Herman Kalckar, who had just moved to the National Institutes of Health. We had many conversations about his future research plans and discussed a search for UDP–L -fucose, which, I assured him, was certain to be productive. Imagine everyoneÕs surprise when he found not UDP- but GDP–L -fucose! He promptly worked out the biosynthesis of this sugar nucleotide from GDP–mannose. These were classic discoveries that paved the way for much of glycobiology. Vic was instrumental in my recruitment to the NIH in 1963, and he served as my unofficial mentor for some years. We jointly edited a volume on carbohydrates (volume 8) for Methods in Enzymology, which we dedicated to Luis Leloir to acknowledge our intellectual debt to the pioneer of sugar nucleotides. After a while our research interests diverged, but Vic remained a good friend and supportive colleague, and interacting with him was always fun and a great learning experience. Elizabeth F. Neufeld David Geffen School of Medicine Department of Biological Chemistry University of California Los Angeles, CA, USA Available online 10 May 2004
0003-9861/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.abb.2004.04.006