Kenneth Austin Dill (born 1947) is a

biophysicist Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations ...

and

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a graduated scientist trained in the study of chemistry, or an officially enrolled student in the field. Chemists study the composition of ...

best known for his work in folding pathways of proteins. He is the director of the Louis and Beatrice Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology at

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public university, public research university in Stony Brook, New York, United States, on Long Island. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is on ...

. He was elected a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

in 2008.S. Gupta, 2012, Profile of Ken A. Dill, ''Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.'' 109(9):3194–3196 (February 28, 2012), DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1200576109, se

accessed 6 June 2014. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014. He has been a co-editor or editor-in-chief, editor of the ''

Annual Review of Biophysics The ''Annual Review of Biophysics'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published annually by Annual Reviews. It covers all aspects of biophysics with solicited review articles. Ken A. Dill has been its editor since 2013. As of 2023, ''Annual ...

'' since 2013.

Life

Dill was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1947. He attended

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

where he obtained a S.B. and S.M. in Mechanical Engineering (1971). He obtained his Ph.D. in 1978 at

UCSD The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing ...

in the Biology Department working with Bruno H. Zimm, studying the biophysical properties of DNA molecules. Towards the end of his doctoral research, he had become interested in the mechanics of protein folding, specifically the way that the RNA-degrading enzyme

Ribonuclease Ribonuclease (commonly abbreviated RNase) is a type of nuclease that catalyzes the degradation of RNA into smaller components. Ribonucleases can be divided into endoribonucleases and exoribonucleases, and comprise several sub-classes within th ...

, folds into its native state. But before tackling the protein folding problem, he moved to

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

and worked with

Paul J. Flory Paul John Flory (June 19, 1910 – September 9, 1985) was an American chemist and Nobel laureate who was known for his work in the field of polymers, or macromolecules. He was a pioneer in understanding the behavior of polymers in solution, and ...

in Chemistry, for his post-doctoral training. After this, he went to the

University of California, San Francisco The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It is part of the University of California system and is dedic ...

, where he popularized the idea that any given protein's surrounding environment places constraints upon it, such that the shapes that it can assume are dramatically decreased. Dill introduced a toy model consisting of tethered beads on a lattice to mimic a folding protein, with beads of the same type (i.e. hydrophobic) attracting each other. Mathematically, the folding process can be visualized as a funnel, in which the several unfolded and misfolded high energy states of the protein occupy positions nearer the top of the funnel, but once the protein begins to fold, its options narrow down with the decrease in conformational entropy and the chain rapidly collapses into its most stable, low energy state. This state is sometimes identified with the native state of a natural protein. In Dill's words, "Like skiers all arriving at the same lodge, the folding protein gets systematically closer to the desired protein shape as it moves down the funnel".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dill, Ken A. Living people Molecular modelling Stony Brook University faculty University of California, San Francisco faculty MIT School of Engineering alumni University of California, San Diego alumni American biophysicists Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences 1947 births Computational chemists Annual Reviews (publisher) editors Presidents of the Biophysical Society Fellows of the American Physical Society