Peter D. Mitchell



Peter Dennis Mitchell (September 29 1920–April 10 1992)[1] was a British biochemist who was awarded the 1978 ATP synthesis.

Mitchell was born in Mitcham, Surrey, England[2].

Biography

Peter D. Mitchell was born in Mitcham, Surrey on 29 September 1920. His parents were Christopher Gibbs Mitchell, a civil servant, and Kate Beatrice Dorothy (née) Taplin. He was educated at Queen's College, Taunton, and at Jesus College, Cambridge where he studied the Natural Sciences Tripos specialising in biochemistry.

He accepted a research post in the Department of Biochemistry, Cambridge, in 1942, and received the degree of Ph.D. in early 1951 for work on the mode of action of penicillin. In 1955 he was invited by Professor Michael Swann to set up a biochemical research unit, called the Chemical Biology Unit, in the Department of Zoology, Edinburgh University, where he was appointed to a Senior Lectureship in 1961, to a Readership in 1962, although ill health led to his resignation in 1963.

Independent researcher

From then to 1965, he supervised the restoration of a Regency-fronted Mansion, known as Glynn House, near Bodmin, Cornwall - adapting a major part of it for use as a research laboratory. He and his former research colleague, Jennifer Moyle founded a charitable company, known as Glynn Research Ltd., to promote fundamental biological research at Glynn House and they embarked on a programme of research on chemiosmotic reactions and reaction systems[3][4][5] [6] [7].

In 1978 he won the chemiosmotic theory."[8]

Chemiosmotic hypothesis

  In the 1960s, oxidative phosphorylation. At the time, the biochemical mechanism of ATP synthesis by oxidative phosphorylation was unknown.

Mitchell realised that the movement of ions across an electrochemical gradient[9].

His theory was confirmed by the discovery of ATP synthase, a membrane-bound protein that uses the potential energy of the electrochemical gradient to make ATP.

Mitchell's chemiosmotic theory turned out to be one of the two seminal discoveries in biology in the 20th century (DNA being the other).[citation needed]

References

  1. ^ Milton H. Saier Jr. Peter Mitchell and the Vital Force. Retrieved on 2007-03-23.
  2. ^ NNDB. Peter Mitchell Bio at NNDB. Retrieved on 2007-03-23.
  3. ^ Mitchell, Peter (Aug 1966). "Chemiosmotic coupling in oxidative and photosynthetic phosphorylation". Biol. Rev. Cambridge Phil Soc. 41: 445-502. PMID 5329743.
  4. ^ Mitchell, Peter (May 1972). "Chemiosmotic coupling in energy transduction: a logical development of biochemical knowledge". J Bioenerg 3 (1): 5-24. PMID 4263930.
  5. ^ Greville, G.D. (1969). "A scrutiny of Mitchell's chemiosmotic hypothesis of respiratory chain and photosynthetic phosphorylation". Curr. Topics Bioenergetics 3: 1–78..
  6. ^ Mitchell, Peter (Feb 1970). "Aspects of the chemiosmotic hypothesis". Biochem J. 116 (4): 5-6. PMID 4244889.
  7. ^ Mitchell, Peter (Oct 1976). "Possible molecular mechanisms of the protonmotive function of cytochrome systems". J Theor Biol 62 (2): 327-67. doi:10.1016/0022-5193(76)90124-7. PMID 186667.
  8. ^ Mitchell's 1978 Nobel speech. Retrieved on 2007-03-23.
  9. ^ Mitchell, Peter (Jul 1961). "Coupling of phosphorylation to electron and hydrogen transfer by a chemi-osmotic type of mechanism". Nature 191: 144-8. PMID 13771349.

See also


v • d • e
Nobel Laureates in Chemistry

William Lipscomb (1976) • Ilya Prigogine (1977) • Peter D. Mitchell (1978) • Georg Wittig (1979) • Walter Gilbert / Frederick Sanger (1980) • Roald Hoffmann (1981) • Aaron Klug (1982) • Henry Taube (1983) • Robert Merrifield (1984) • Herbert A. Hauptman / Jerome Karle (1985) • John Polanyi (1986) • Charles J. Pedersen (1987) • Robert Huber / Hartmut Michel (1988) • Thomas Cech (1989) • Elias Corey (1990) • Richard R. Ernst (1991) • Rudolph A. Marcus (1992) • Michael Smith (1993) • George Olah (1994) • Mario J. Molina / Frank Rowland (1995) • Richard Smalley (1996) • Jens Christian Skou (1997) • John Pople (1998) • Ahmed Zewail (1999) • Alan J. Heeger / Alan MacDiarmid / Hideki Shirakawa (2000)

Complete roster | (1901–1925) | (1926–1950) | (1951–1975) | (1976-2000) | (2001–2025)

 
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Peter_D._Mitchell". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.