Stuart J. Edelstein (born 1941) 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 ...

, emeritus professor from the

University of Geneva The University of Geneva (French: ''Université de Genève'') is a public university, public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by French theologian John Calvin as a Theology, theological seminary. It rema ...

, professor at the

École Normale Supérieure École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...

and visiting scientist at the

Babraham Institute The Babraham Institute is a life sciences research institution focussing on healthy ageing. The Babraham Institute is based on the Babraham Research Campus, partly occupying a former manor house, but also laboratory and science facility buil ...

. His research focuses on the properties of

allosteric In the fields of biochemistry and pharmacology an allosteric regulator (or allosteric modulator) is a substance that binds to a site on an enzyme or receptor distinct from the active site, resulting in a conformational change that alters the p ...

proteins, which conformations and activities are affected by the binding of

ligands In coordination chemistry, a ligand is an ion or molecule with a functional group that binds to a central metal atom to form a coordination complex. The bonding with the metal generally involves formal donation of one or more of the ligand's ...

. Using mathematical models and 3D structures, he studied the function of

hemoglobin Hemoglobin (haemoglobin, Hb or Hgb) is a protein containing iron that facilitates the transportation of oxygen in red blood cells. Almost all vertebrates contain hemoglobin, with the sole exception of the fish family Channichthyidae. Hemoglobin ...

,Stuart J Edelstein. Extensions of the allosteric model for haemoglobin. ''Nature'' (1971), 230: 224-227 solving the structure of mutant form leading to

sickle-cell disease Sickle cell disease (SCD), also simply called sickle cell, is a group of inherited haemoglobin-related blood disorders. The most common type is known as sickle cell anemia. Sickle cell anemia results in an abnormality in the oxygen-carrying ...

.Gene Dykes, Richard H Crepeau, Stuart J Edelstein. Three-dimensional reconstruction of the fibres of sickle cell haemoglobin. ''Nature'' (1978), 272: 506-510 He then turned his attention on the allosteric regulation of

neurotransmitter receptor A neurotransmitter receptor (also known as a neuroreceptor) is a membrane receptor protein that is activated by a neurotransmitter. Chemicals on the outside of the cell, such as a neurotransmitter, can bump into the cell's membrane, in which the ...

s,Jean-Pierre Changeux, Stuart J Edelstein. Allosteric mechanisms of signal transduction. ''Science'' (2005), 308: 1424-1428 in particular the

nicotinic acetylcholine receptors Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, or nAChRs, are receptor polypeptides that respond to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Nicotinic receptors also respond to drugs such as the agonist nicotine. They are found in the central and peripheral ner ...

in collaboration with

Jean-Pierre Changeux Jean-Pierre Changeux (; born 6 April 1936) is a French neuroscientist known for his research in several fields of biology, from the structure and function of proteins (with a focus on the allosteric proteins), to the early development of the ner ...

.Stuart J Edelstein, Olivier Schaad, Eric Henry, Daniel Bertrand, Jean-Pierre Changeux. A kinetic mechanism for nicotinic acetylcholine receptors based on multiple allosteric transitions. ''Biol Cyber'' (1996), 75: 361-379Jean-Pierre Changeux, Stuart J Edelstein. Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors: From Molecular Biology to Cognition. (2005) Odile Jacob ed.

Life

Stuart Edelstein received a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

(1967) in

Biochemistry Biochemistry, or biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology, a ...

from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. After a post-doctoral training at the

Pasteur Institute The Pasteur Institute (, ) is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization and vaccines for anthrax and rabies. Th ...

in the laboratory of

Jacques Monod Jacques Lucien Monod (; 9 February 1910 – 31 May 1976) was a French biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965, sharing it with François Jacob and André Lwoff "for their discoveries concerning genetic control of e ...

, he joined the faculty of

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

, where he became professor in 1977. He served as chairman of the Section of Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology from 1978 to 1980. He was a visiting scientist at the

Weizmann Institute of Science The Weizmann Institute of Science ( ''Machon Weizmann LeMada'') is a Public university, public research university in Rehovot, Israel, established in 1934, fourteen years before the State of Israel was founded. Unlike other List of Israeli uni ...

(1974) and spent two sabbatical years (1980–1981 and 1984–1985) in Paris as Professeur associé at the University of Paris XII (Créteil) in the laboratory of Jean Rosa and as visiting scientist at the

In 1986 Edelstein moved as professor in the department of Biochemistry of the

. He was director of the department for the period 1987–1994. He served as president of the Swiss Biophysical Section (1994–1998) and president of the Swiss Committee of the International Union for Pure and Applied Biophysics. He returned to the Pasteur Institute in 1994 for a sabbatical leave in the laboratory of

. He held the international chair at the

Collège de France The (), formerly known as the or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment () in France. It is located in Paris near La Sorbonne. The has been considered to be France's most ...

for the academic year 2002–2003. In September 2006, Edelstein became professor emeritus at the University of Geneva. He continued research as a visiting scientist in several academic institutions, notably at the EMBL-

European Bioinformatics Institute The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) is an intergovernmental organization (IGO) which, as part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) family, focuses on research and services in bioinformatics. It is located on the Wel ...

, the

and The

. Edelstein was also active in the biotech sector as cofounder of Genomic Vision and Scipio bioscience. As President and Chief Scientific Officer at Scipio, he directed development of a kit-based approach to determine the gene expression profiles of thousands of individual cells by identifying their messenger RNA molecules in a reversible-hydrogel process known as RevGel-seq.Komatsu J. et al. (2023). RevGel-seq: instrument-free single-cell RNA sequencing using a reversible hydrogel for cell-specific barcoding. Sci Rep 13, 4866

Awards and recognition

* 2003, awarded the

Legion of honour The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and Civil society, civil. Currently consisting of five cl ...

, rank chevalier * 1998, elected foreign member of the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...

Books

* Jean-Pierre Changeux, Stuart J Edelstein. ''Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors: From Molecular Biology to Cognition''. (2005) Odile Jacob ed. * Stuart J Edelstein. ''Des gènes et génomes''. (2002) Odile Jacob ed. * Daniel M Bollag, Michael D Rozycki, Stuart J Edelestein. ''Protein Methods'' (1996) * Stuart J Edelstein. ''The Sickled Cell: From Myths to Molecules''. (1986) Harvard University Press. * J M Widom, Stuart J Edelstein. ''Chemistry: An Introduction to General, Organic and Biological Chemistry''. (1981) W.H.Freeman. * Stuart J Edelstein. ''Introductory biochemistry; fundamentals of cellular metabolism and molecular biology''. (1973) Holden-Day.

References

External links

Stuart Edelstein's page
at the

{{DEFAULTSORT:Edelstein, Stuart Living people 1941 births 21st-century American biochemists