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Thioredoxin: an unexpected meeting place

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Abstract

For much of the latter part of the 20th century, photosynthesis research at Berkeley was dominated by Daniel Arnon and Melvin Calvin. In this article, I have briefly described how their contributions jointly provided the foundation for our work on thioredoxin and how important Andrew Benson was to this effort.

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Notes

  1. I remember the abortive attempts by Roger Stanier to reconcile the Calvin/Arnon axis well! At their very first meeting I was called upon as a young postdoctoral student (leading lambs to the slaughter) to present some work I was involved in at that time. This first seminar was held in the old Life Sciences Building in early 1959 I believe. About 10 min into the talk Calvin and Arnon started arguing about relative reaction rates and their consequences on the abundance of 14C labeled metabolites in the chromatograms we were viewing. I stopped speaking as the two of them continued to argue, Calvin with the precision of a physical chemist and Arnon with the reasoning of a philosopher. After 5 min or so Arnon made an analogy by comparing the reaction under discussion to “a man with an athletic heart.” Calvin interrupted “to hell with athletic hearts, let’s get back to photosynthesis!” By this time the room had gone silent and everyone had forgotten what I was talking about! This was my introduction to academic debate at Berkeley. (R. P. Park February 20, 2007).

  2. In 1960 (when I was on sabbatical) the Royal Society held a garden party in Cambridge as part of their tercentenary anniversary. I was visiting Robin Hill at the time, and he took Jean and me along. He said Calvin would be there, and I told him he would have to introduce me. Every time I met Calvin in Berkeley I had to be formally introduced supposedly because I was with Arnon, and he made it a point of honor not to recognize members of the Arnon group. So, at the Garden Party I was duly introduced by Robin Hill, and, to my complete astonishment, Calvin immediately replied, “Oh yes, I know Whatley.” We did not talk science as this was a social occasion, but Mrs. Calvin declared that she had in her Berkeley garden an avocado tree that produced useful fruit even in a cool climate and would we like a cutting. On my return to Berkeley I visited Calvin in his lab and again had to be introduced! I suppose I was now under the patronage of Arnon rather than Hill and that made all the difference. Incidentally, we never got our avocado cutting! (F. R. Whatley March 3, 2007).

  3. The altercations between Melvin CaIvin with Daniel Arnon were well-known throughout the scientific community. They lead to awkward situations even when European visitors came to Berkeley. So it was when Wilhelm Menke, a pioneer in photosynthesis research, came to Berkeley from Cologne, Germany, in spring 1963. He visited Melvin Calvin in his office in the morning, and in the afternoon walked down to Calvin’s laboratory in the Life Science Building to have discussions with several members of his group. Menke was interested in our work on thylalkoid lipid composition of spinach chloroplasts since my Nature paper on this topic (with Rod Park) had just appeared. When I asked Menke after the discussion about his further plans of the day, he hesitated at first and then told me that he had also an appointment with Daniel Arnon. However, he quickly added that I should not tell anyone as he did not want Calvin to learn that he would see Arnon. Furthermore, Arnon should not know that he had seen Melvin Calvin first. When I told him that I knew Daniel Arnon well and that we had had several discussions on vitamin K1 function in photosynthesis, he accepted my invitation to accompany him to Arnon’s laboratory. (H. K. Lichtenthaler, April 11, 2007).

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Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Professors Hartmut Lichtenthaler, Richard Malkin, Roderic Park, Kenneth Sauer, Achim Trebst and Robert Whatley for helpful comments on this manuscript.

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  1. Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, 111 Koshland Hall, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    Bob B. Buchanan

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Correspondence to Bob B. Buchanan.

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Buchanan, B.B. Thioredoxin: an unexpected meeting place. Photosynth Res 92, 145–148 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11120-007-9196-7

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