Campus Directory

Division Baskin School of Engineering

Department/College/Unit Biomolecular Engineering

Title Professor Emeritus

Affiliation Faculty

Faculty Type Emeriti

Areas of Expertise Chemistry

Primary Office Location Physical Sciences Building
Physical Sciences, Room 405B

Additional Location(s) 405B

Office Hours By Appointment

Mail Stop Chemistry

Biography, Education and Training

BSc Chemistry, Duke University, 1961

Ph.D., Ohio State University School of Medicine 1965

Post-doctoral research, UC Berkeley, 1966-67

Asst. Assoc. Full Professor, UC Davis, 1967 - 1994

Research professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry, 1994 - present

Summary of Expertise

Membrane Biophysics, Model Membrane Systems, Membrane Transport Mechanisms, Molecular Self-Assembly Processes

Research Interests

David Deamer's primary research area concerns the manner in which linear macromolecules traverse nanoscopic channels. Single-stranded nucleic acid molecules can be driven electrophoretically through a large channel embedded in a lipid-bilayer membrane, and the presence of the polynucleotide in the channel affects the ionic conductance in a manner related to chain length and concentration. This observation has considerable potential for characterizing DNA and RNA in microscopic volumes of nucleic acid solutions. (See Akeson et al. 1999 and Vercoutere et al. 2001 for recent reports.)

A second line of research concerns molecular self-assembly processes related to the structure and function of biological membranes, and particularly the origin and evolution of membrane structure. One example of such research was reported recently by Dworkin et al. (2001) in which it was shown that photochemical reactions simulating those occurring in the interstellar medium give rise to amphiphilic molecules that can self-assemble into membrane structures. Apel et al. (2001) and Monnard et al., (2002) went on to show that membranes can self-assemble for simple amphiphiles such as fatty acids and alcohols, and that such processes are markedly affected by ionic content of the environment. These results help us to understand how primitive forms of cellular life appeared on the early Earth and were able to capture nutrients from the surrounding medium and incorporate them in intracellular growth processes.

Awards, Honors and Grants

Guggenheim Fellow 1986
President, ISSOL 2011 - present

Selected Publications

• J. P. Dworkin, D. W. Deamer, S. A. Sandford, and L. J. Allamandola. 2001. Self-assembling amphiphilic molecules: Synthesis in simulated interstellar/precometary ices. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98:815-819.
• Vercoutere, W., S. Winters-Hilt, H. Olsen, D.W. Deamer. D. Haussler, and M. Akeson. 2001. Rapid discrimination among individual DNA molecules at single nucleotide resolution using a nanopore instrument. Nature Biotechnology 19: 248-250.
• Deamer D, Dworkin JP, Sandford SA, Bernstein MP, Allamandola LJ. The first cell membranes. 2002. Astrobiology. 2:371-81.
• Winters-Hilt, S., W. Vercoutere, V. S. DeGuzman, D. Deamer, M. Akeson & D. Haussler. 2003. Highly accurate classification of Watson-Crick base-pairs on termini of single DNA molecules Biophys. J. 84:967-76.
• Vercoutere, W.A., S. Winters-Hilt, V. S. DeGuzman, D. Deamer, S. Ridino, J. T. Rodgers, H. E. Olsen, A. Marziali, and M. Akeson. 2003. Discrimination among individual Watson-Crick base-pairs at the termini of single DNA hairpin molecules. Nucleic Acids Research 31:1311-1318.

•  Groen J, Deamer DW, Kros A, Ehrenfreund P. 2012. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons as plausible prebiotic membrane components. Orig Life Evol Biosph. 42:295-306.

• Toppozini L, Dies H, Deamer DW, Rheinstädter MC (2013) Adenosine Monophosphate Forms Ordered Arrays in Multilamellar Lipid Matrices: Insights into Assembly of Nucleic Acid for Primitive Life. PLoS ONE 8(5): e62810.

• Black RA, Blosser MC, Stottrup BL, Tavakley R, Deamer DW, Keller SL. 2013. Nucleobases bind to and stabilize aggregates of a prebiotic amphiphile, providing a viable mechanism for the emergence of protocells. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 110:13272-6.

• De Guzman V, Shenasa H, Vercoutere W, Deamer D (2014) Generation of oligonucleotides under hydrothermal conditions by non-enzymatic polymerization. J Mol Evol 78:251-262

• Da Silva, L., Maurel, M.C., Deamer, D. (2014) Salt-promoted synthesis of RNA-like molecules in simulated hydrothermal conditions.  J Mol Evol 80: 86 - 97.

• Deamer D. 2012.  Liquid crystalline nanostructures: organizing matrices for non-enzymatic nucleic acid polymerization. Chem Soc Rev. 41:5375-9.

• Deamer, D. 2014. The Origin of Life. pp. 121-26. The Princeton Guide to Evolution, Princeton University Press.

• Georgiou CD, Deamer DW. 2014. Lipids as universal biomarkers of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology. 14:541-9. doi: 10.1089/ast.2013.1134

• Deamer, D.W. and Szostak, J. (eds) 2010. Origins of Life. Cold Spring Harbor Press, NY.

• Damer B, Deamer D. 2015. Coupled phases and combinatorial selection in fluctuating hydrothermal pools: a scenario to guide experimental approaches to the origin of cellular life. Life (Basel). 5:872-87. doi: 10.3390/life5010872.

• Deamer, DW, Georgio CD. 2015. Hydrothermal Conditions and the Origin of Cellular Life. Astrobiology 15: 1091-1095. doi:10.1089/ast.2015.1338.

• Deamer, D.W. 2011. First Life. University of California Press, Berkeley CA.

   

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