Dan Tawfik

Dan Salah Tawfik (28 May 1955 – 4 May 2021) was an Israeli biochemist, best known for his contributions in protein engineering, evolutionary biochemistry and, more particularly, enzyme evolution.[1][2]

Dan S. Tawfik
Born
Dan Salah Tawfik

(1955-05-28)28 May 1955
Jerusalem, Israel
Died4 May 2021(2021-05-04) (aged 65)
Paklenica, Croatia
NationalityIsraeli
Known for
Awards
  • EMBO Membership (2009)
  • Teva Award for Excellence in Memory of Eli Hurvitz (2013)
  • The ECI Enzyme Engineering Award (2015)
  • EMET Prize in Life Sciences (2020)
Gordon Hammes ACS Lectureship (2021)
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsWeizmann Institute of Science
Doctoral advisorProfs. Zelig Eshhar and Michael Sela

Biography

Tawfik was born in Jerusalem to a family of Jewish immigrants originally from Iraq.[3] He received his BSc in chemistry and biochemistry (1988) and MSc in biotechnology (1990) from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and his PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science (1995).[4] He then moved to the United Kingdom where, after two years of postdoctoral research working under Alan Fersht at the University of Cambridge (UK) and at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Centre for Protein Engineering, he became a senior research fellow at Sidney Sussex College and at the Centre for Protein Engineering,[4] where he was appointed group leader in 1999. In 2001 he joined the Department of Biological Chemistry (now called the Department of Biomolecular Sciences) at the Weizmann Institute of Science and held the Nella and Leon Benoziyo Professorial Chair of Biochemistry from 2010. Tawfik was Vice-Chair of the Scientific Council of the Weizmann Institute of Science from 2019 until the time of his death.[1][5]

Tawfik died on 4 May 2021, in a rock climbing accident at Anića kuk in Paklenica National Park, Croatia.[1][6][7]

Research

Tawfik developed in vitro compartmentalization (jointly with Andrew D. Griffiths).[8][9] This technology enables the compartmentalization of single DNA/RNA molecules in emulsion droplets, thus providing cell-like compartment, in which genes can be replicated, transcribed and translated. This technology allowed directed enzyme evolution to be performed without the involvement of living cells, and also became the basis of massive parallel sequencing methods[10] such as 454 sequencing or SOLID, and of digital polymerase chain reaction.

Tawfik was one of the earliest and most highly-cited contributors to the study of enzyme promiscuity and its role in enzyme evolution.[11] He established the link between the conformational diversity of proteins and their promiscuity,[12] demonstrated the evolvability of promiscuous protein functions (the ability of mutations to dramatically enhance a promiscuous activity with minor effects of the protein’s original function),[13] and the role of promiscuity in the evolution of pesticide degrading enzymes.[14] His group has also addressed the evolutionary trajectories that lead to new enzymes, and the link between protein folding, stability and evolvability.[15]

His research on the emergence of the first enzymes worked toward establishing the roots of the most common enzyme lineages, the Rossmann enzymes and P-loop NTPases, in simple polypeptides,[16][17] suggested ornithine as the first cationic amino acid,[17] and demonstrated the evolvability of promiscuous protein functions (the ability of mutations to dramatically enhance a promiscuous activity with minor effects of the protein’s original function).[18]

Awards and honours
  • The Wolgin Prize for Scientific Excellence (2007)
  • The Weizmann Prize from the Tel Aviv municipality (2007)
  • EMBO Membership (2009)[19][20]
  • Teva Award for Excellence in Memory of Eli Hurvitz (2013)[21]
  • The ECI Enzyme Engineering Award (2015)
  • The EMET Prize in Life Sciences (2020)[22]
  • Gordon Hammes American Chemical Society (ACS) Lectureship (2021)

References
  1. Atzmon, Yahel (6 May 2021). "נפטר, פרופ' דן תופיק, החוקר שהבין חלבונים" [Deceased, Prof. Dan Tawfiq, the researcher who understood proteins]. Ynet (in Hebrew).
  2. Elias, Mikael H; Fraser, James S; Kamerlin, Shina Caroline Lynn; Patrick, Wayne M; Jackson, Colin J (27 May 2021). "Dan Salah Tawfik (1955‐2021)—A giant of protein evolution". EMBO Reports. 22 (7): e53256. doi:10.15252/embr.202153256. PMC 8406398. PMID 34046990. S2CID 235230889.
  3. "פרס א.מ.ת. | פרס האמנות, המדע והתרבות". emetprize.com. Retrieved 5 May 2021.
  4. "2017 Speaker bios: Tawfik, Dan". www.ch.cam.ac.uk. 5 September 2017. Archived from the original on 17 May 2017. Retrieved 11 May 2021.
  5. "Scientific Council Chair and Vice Chair". Academic Affairs Office. 18 October 2015. Archived from the original on 11 May 2021. Retrieved 11 May 2021.
  6. "World-famous Israeli biologist dies in climbing accident in Croatia". The Jerusalem Post. 6 May 2021. Archived from the original on 6 May 2021. Retrieved 11 May 2021.
  7. "Jutarnji list - Tragedija u Nacionalnom parku Paklenica: S Anića kuka pao muškarac i na mjestu poginuo". www.jutarnji.hr (in Croatian). 4 May 2021. Retrieved 8 May 2021.
  8. "Laboratoire de Biochimie : Team". www.lbc.espci.fr.
  9. Tawfik, D.S.; Griffiths, A.D. (1998). "Man-made cell-like compartments for molecular evolution". Nat. Biotechnol. 16 (7): 652–656. doi:10.1038/nbt0798-652. PMID 9661199. S2CID 25527137.
  10. Griffiths, Andrew D.; Tawfik, Dan S. (November 2006). "Miniaturising the laboratory in emulsion droplets". Trends in Biotechnology. 24 (9): 395–402. doi:10.1016/j.tibtech.2006.06.009. ISSN 0167-7799. PMID 16843558.
  11. "Dan S Tawfik". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 8 May 2021.
  12. James, L.C.; Tawfik, D.S. (2003). "Conformational diversity and protein evolution--a 60-year-old hypothesis revisited". Trends Biochem. Sci. 28 (7): 361–8. doi:10.1038/ng1482. PMID 15568024. S2CID 8245673.
  13. Aharoni, A.; Gaidukov, L.; Khersonsky, O.; McQ Gould, S.; Roodveldt, C.; Tawfik, D.S. (2005). "The 'evolvability' of promiscuous protein functions". Nature Genetics. 37 (7): 73–76. doi:10.1016/S0968-0004(03)00135-X. PMID 12878003.
  14. Afriat, L.; Roodveldt, C.; Manco, G.; Tawfik, D.S. (2006). "The latent promiscuity of newly identified microbial lactonases is linked to a recently diverged phosphotriesterase". Biochemistry. 45 (46): 3677–86. doi:10.1021/bi061268r. PMID 17105187.
  15. Tokuriki, N.; Tawfik, D.S. (2009). "Stability effects of mutations and protein evolvability". Curr. Opin. Struct. Biol. 19 (5): 596–604. doi:10.1016/j.sbi.2009.08.003. PMID 19765975.
  16. Longo, L.M.; Jablonska, J.; Vyas, P.; Kanade, M.; Kolodny, R.; Ben-Tal, N.; Tawfik, D.S. (2020). "On the emergence of P-Loop NTPase and Rossmann enzymes from a Beta-Alpha-Beta ancestral fragment". eLife. 9. doi:10.7554/eLife.64415. PMC 7758060. PMID 33295875.
  17. Romero Romero, M.L.; Yang, F.; Lin, Y-R.; Toth-Petroczy, A.; Berezovky, I.N.; Goncearenco, A.; Yang, W.; Wellner, A.; Kumar-Desmukh, F.; Sharon, M.; Baker, D.; Varani, G.; Tawfik, D.S. (2018). "Simple yet functional phosphate-loop proteins". Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 115 (51): E11943–E11950. doi:10.1073/pnas.1812400115. PMC 6304952. PMID 30504143.
  18. Longo, L.M.; Despotovic, D.; Weil-Ktorza, O.; Walker, M.J.; Jablonska, J.; Fridmann-Sirkis, Y.; Varani, G.; Metanis, N.; Tawfik, D.S. (2020). "Primordial emergence of a nucleic acid-binding protein via phase separation and statistical ornithine-to-arginine conversion". Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 117 (27): 15731–15739. doi:10.1073/pnas.2001989117. PMC 7355028. PMID 32561643.
  19. "Awards and appointments: Tawfik EMBO". wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il. Weizmann Institute. 5 October 2010. Archived from the original on 11 May 2021.
  20. "Find people in the EMBO Communities". people.embo.org.
  21. "Awards and appointments: Tawfik Teva". wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il. Weizmann Institute. 7 August 2013. Archived from the original on 8 May 2021.
  22. "פרס א.מ.ת. | פרס האמנות, המדע והתרבות". emetprize.com.
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