Michael Levitt (biophysicist) explained

Michael Levitt
Birth Date:1947 5, df=yes
Birth Place:Pretoria, South Africa
Education:Pretoria Boys High School
Alma Mater:King's College London (BScs)
University of Cambridge (PhD)
Thesis Title:Conformation analysis of proteins
Thesis Url:https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/30599cdd-0d0c-43cd-9086-af4d24ccf68c
Thesis Year:1972
Doctoral Advisor:Robert Diamond[1]
Spouse:Shoshan Brosh

Michael Levitt, (Hebrew: מיכאל לויט; born 9 May 1947) is a South African-born biophysicist and a professor of structural biology at Stanford University, a position he has held since 1987.[2] [3] Levitt received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry,[4] together with Martin Karplus and Arieh Warshel, for "the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems".[5] [6] [7] [8] In 2018, Levitt was a founding co-editor of the Annual Review of Biomedical Data Science.[9]

Early life and education

Michael Levitt was born in Pretoria, South Africa, to a Jewish family from Plungė, Lithuania; his father was from Lithuania and his mother from the Czech Republic.[10] He attended Sunnyside Primary School and then Pretoria Boys High School between 1960 and 1962. The family moved to England when he was 15.[11] Levitt spent 1963 studying applied mathematics at the University of Pretoria.[12] He attended King's College London, graduating with a first-class honours degree in physics in 1967.[13] [14]

In 1967, he visited Israel for the first time. Together with his Israeli wife, Rina,[15] a multimedia artist, he left to study at Cambridge, where their three children were born. Levitt was a PhD student in Computational biology at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and was based at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology from 1968 to 1972, where he developed a computer program for studying the conformations of molecules that underpinned much of his later work.[16] [17]

Career and research

In 1979, he returned to Israel and conducted research at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, becoming an Israeli citizen in 1980. He served in the Israel Defense Forces for six weeks in 1985. In 1986, he began teaching at Stanford University, and since then has split his time between Israel and California.[11] He went on to gain a research fellowship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

From 1980 to 1987, he was Professor of Chemical Physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot. Thereafter, he served as Professor of Structural biology, at Stanford University, California.

Levitt was one of the first researchers to conduct molecular dynamics simulations of DNA and proteins and developed the first software for this purpose.[19] [20] [21] [22] He is currently well known for developing approaches to predict macromolecular structures, having participated in many Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction (CASP) competitions,[23] where he criticised molecular dynamics for inability to refine protein structures.[24] He has also worked on simplified representations of protein structure for analysing folding and packing,[25] [26] [27] as well as developing scoring systems for large-scale sequence-structure comparisons.[28] [29] He has mentored many successful scientists, including Mark Gerstein and Ram Samudrala. Cyrus Chothia was one of his colleagues.

Industrial collaboration

Levitt has served on the Scientific Advisory Boards of the following companies: Dupont Merck Pharmaceuticals, AMGEN, Protein Design Labs, Affymetrix, Molecular Applications Group, 3D Pharmaceuticals, Algodign, Oplon Ltd, Cocrystal Discovery, InterX, and StemRad, Ltd,.

COVID-19

Levitt has been outspoken during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and made a number of wrong predictions on the disease's spread based on his own modelling.[30] [31] [32] On March 18, 2020, he predicted that Israel would see less than ten deaths from COVID-19, and on July 25, 2020, he incorrectly predicted that the outbreak in the U.S. would be over by the end of August 2020 with a total of fewer than 170,000 deaths.[33] [30] [34] As of November 2021, the U.S. was recording COVID-19 deaths at the rate of about 1,000 per day,[35] while Israel has reported over 8,000 COVID-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic.[36]

Levitt has also raised concerns about potential damaging effects of COVID-19 lockdown orders on economic activity as well in increasing suicide and abuse rates, and has signed the Great Barrington Declaration,[37] a statement supported by a group of academics advocating for alternatives to lockdowns which has been criticized by the WHO and other public health organizations as dangerous and lacking in sound scientific basis.[38] [39]

Critics have expressed concern regarding Levitt's incorrect or potentially misleading predictions as well as his anti-lockdown positions, in part due to his status as a Nobel laureate and his large following on Twitter.[40] Maia Majumder, a computational epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, stated that "Michael Levitt has a huge, huge following, so this creates lots of problems when he’s tweeting something that may be misinformative." Randy Schekman, a 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine winner, wrote of Levitt's expressed positions that "in this instance, I believe he crossed a boundary from data to public policy where the impact of his word as a Nobel laureate has undue influence."

Awards and honors

Levitt was elected an EMBO Member in 1983, a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2001,[41] and a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2002,[42] and received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Martin Karplus and Arieh Warshel, "for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems".[43] He received the DeLano Award for Computational Biosciences in 2014.[44] He was elected an ISCB Fellow by the International Society for Computational Biology in 2015.[45]

Personal life

Levitt holds South African, American, British and Israeli citizenship.

His wife Rina died on 23 January 2017.

He is the sixth Israeli to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in under a decade.[46] [47]

See also

Notes and References

  1. Diamond . R.. Levitt . M.. Michael Levitt (biophysicist). A refinement of the structure of lysozyme. Biochemical Journal. 125. 4. 92P. 1971. 5144255. 1178298. 10.1042/bj1250092Pa.
  2. Web site: Levitt Lab Server | Computational Structural Biology . Csb.stanford.edu . 22 March 2017 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20160325231210/http://csb.stanford.edu/ . 25 March 2016 .
  3. Web site: Michael Levitt . Csb.stanford.edu\accessdate=2017-03-22 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20100715200937/http://csb.stanford.edu/levitt/ . 15 July 2010 .
  4. 10.1038/502280a. 24132265. Modellers react to chemistry award: Nobel Prize proves that theorists can measure up to experimenters. Nature. 502. 7471. 280. 2013. Van Noorden . Richard. 2013Natur.502..280V . free.
  5. 10.1038/nature.2013.13903. Computer modellers secure chemistry Nobels. Nature. 2013. Van Noorden . R. . 211729791.
  6. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2013 . Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences . 9 October 2013 . 9 October 2013.
  7. News: Chang . Kenneth . 3 Researchers Win Nobel Prize in Chemistry . 9 October 2013 . . 9 October 2013 .
  8. Web site: Michael Levitt – Facts . Nobelprize.org . 9 May 1947 . 22 March 2017.
  9. 10.1146/annurev-bd-01-041718-100001. What is Biomedical Data Science and do We Need an Annual Review of It?. 2018. Altman. Russ B.. Levitt. Michael. Annual Review of Biomedical Data Science. 1. i-iii. free.
  10. Web site: Foreign Minister congratulates Litvak Levitt on winning Nobel PrizeThe Lithuania Tribune . en.delfi.lt . 2 February 2022 . https://archive.today/20131013182224/http://en.delfi.lt/53464/foreign-minister-congratulates-litvak-levitt-on-winning-nobel-prize-201353464/ . 13 October 2013 . dead.
  11. Web site: Ravidyesterday . Barak . Nobel laureate Michael Levitt tells Haaretz: 'I still feel 16, so I have no ego' – World . Haaretz . 10 October 2013 . 22 March 2017.
  12. Web site: News > University of Pretoria . 30 October 2013 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20131101211033/http://web.up.ac.za/default.asp?ipkCategoryID=8641&ArticleID=18621 . 1 November 2013 .
  13. Web site: King's College London Calendar: 1968–1969 Page 282. King's Collections. 12 September 2017.
  14. Web site: Michael Levitt 2 Page CV . Csb.stanford.edu . 22 March 2017 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20120322220938/http://csb.stanford.edu/levitt/2_Page_CV.html . 22 March 2012 .
  15. Web site: Michael Levitt – Photo Gallery . Nobelprize.org . 22 March 2017.
  16. PhD . Michael. Levitt. Conformation analysis of proteins . University of Cambridge . 1972 . Michael Levitt (biophysicist). . 10.17863/CAM.15942.
  17. Web site: Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Peterhouse alumnus. University of Cambridge. 11 October 2013. 2013-10-10.
  18. News: Fiske . Gavriel . 9 October 2013 . 3 Jewish professors – two of them Israeli – share 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry . . 12 November 2017.
  19. Chothia . C. . Cyrus Chothia. Lesk . A. M. . Arthur M. Lesk. Tramontano . A. . Levitt . M. . Michael Levitt (biophysicist). Smith-Gill . S. J. . Air . G. . Sheriff . S. . Padlan . E. A. . Davies . D. . Tulip . 10.1038/342877a0 . W. R. . Colman . P. M. . Peter Colman. Spinelli . S. . Alzari . P. M. . Poljak . R. J. . Conformations of immunoglobulin hypervariable regions . Nature . 342 . 6252 . 877–883 . 1989 . 2687698 . 1989Natur.342..877C . 4241051 .
  20. Levitt . M. . Michael Levitt (biophysicist). Chothia . C. . Cyrus Chothia. Structural patterns in globular proteins . Nature . 261 . 5561 . 552–558 . 1976 . 934293. 1976Natur.261..552L . 10.1038/261552a0 . 4154884 .
  21. Warshel . A. . Levitt . M. . Michael Levitt (biophysicist). Theoretical studies of enzymic reactions: Dielectric, electrostatic and steric stabilization of the carbonium ion in the reaction of lysozyme . Journal of Molecular Biology . 103 . 2 . 227–249 . 1976 . 985660 . 10.1016/0022-2836(76)90311-9.
  22. Levitt . M. . Michael Levitt (biophysicist). A simplified representation of protein conformations for rapid simulation of protein folding . Journal of Molecular Biology . 104 . 1 . 59–107 . 1976 . 957439 . 10.1016/0022-2836(76)90004-8. 10.1.1.26.4069 .
  23. Chopra . G. . Kalisman . N. . Levitt . M. . Michael Levitt (biophysicist). 10.1002/prot.22781 . Consistent refinement of submitted models at CASP using a knowledge-based potential . Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics . 78 . 12 . 2668–78 . 2010 . 20589633 . 2911515 .
  24. CASP participants usually did not try to use MD to avoid "a central embarrassment of molecular mechanics, namely that energy minimization or molecular dynamics generally leads to a model that is less like the experimental structure", 10048917. 1999. Koehl. P. A brighter future for protein structure prediction. Nature Structural Biology. 6. 2. 108–11. Levitt. M. 10.1038/5794. 3162636.
  25. 10.1016/0022-2836(94)90040-X . Hinds . D. A. . Levitt . M. . Exploring conformational space with a simple lattice model for protein structure . Journal of Molecular Biology . 243 . 4 . 668–682 . 1994 . 7966290. free .
  26. Park . B. . Levitt . M. . 10.1006/jmbi.1996.0256 . Energy Functions that Discriminate X-ray and Near-native Folds from Well-constructed Decoys . Journal of Molecular Biology . 258 . 2 . 367–392 . 1996 . 8627632 . 10.1.1.40.9779 .
  27. Gerstein . M. . Tsai . J. . Levitt . M. . 10.1006/jmbi.1995.0351 . The Volume of Atoms on the Protein Surface: Calculated from Simulation, using Voronoi Polyhedra . Journal of Molecular Biology . 249 . 5 . 955–966 . 1995 . 7540695 . 14691078 . free .
  28. 10.1073/pnas.95.11.5913 . Levitt . M. . Gerstein . M. . A unified statistical framework for sequence comparison and structure comparison . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America . 95 . 11 . 5913–5920 . 1998 . 9600892 . 34495. 1998PNAS...95.5913L . free .
  29. 10.1093/nar/28.1.254 . Brenner . S. E. . Koehl . P. . Levitt . M. . The ASTRAL compendium for protein structure and sequence analysis . Nucleic Acids Research . 28 . 1 . 254–256 . 2000 . 10592239 . 102434.
  30. News: Boodman . Eric . He's a Stanford professor and a Nobel laureate. Critics say he was dangerously misleading on Covid . 13 September 2021 . Stat . May 24, 2021.
  31. News: Lloyd. Zenobia. Q&A: Michael Levitt on why there shouldn't be a lockdown, how he's been tracking coronavirus. 18 December 2021. Stanford Daily.
  32. News: Los Angeles Times . Why this Nobel laureate predicts a quicker coronavirus recovery: 'We're going to be fine' .
  33. Web site: Levitt . Michael . US Covid19 will be d one in 4 weeks . Twitter . en.
  34. Web site: Prof Michael Levitt: here's what I got wrong – The Post. 2020-10-11. UnHerd. en-GB.
  35. News: Covid deaths in the United States surpass 800,000 . 15 December 2021. 15 December 2021. The New York Times. Bosman . Julie . Harmon . Amy . Sun . Albert . Reynolds . Chloe . Cahalan . Sarah .
  36. News: Israel warns of 'emergency' after detecting new virus strain. Krauss. Joseph. 26 November 2021. ABC.
  37. News: Herd Immunity Is 'Pixie Dust Thinking,' Infectious Disease Expert Says. Robin. Young. 18 December 2021. WBUR.
  38. News: Jessie. Hellmann. Dozens of public health groups, experts blast 'herd immunity' strategy backed by White House. The Hill. 15 October 2020. 18 October 2020.
  39. News: Staff and agencies in Geneva. 12 October 2020. WHO chief says herd immunity approach to pandemic 'unethical'. The Guardian. October 12, 2020.
  40. News: Fishwick. Samuel. 'I've had emails calling me evil'... Meet the Covid scientists at war. 13 October 2020. Evening Standard.
  41. Web site: https://web.archive.org/web/20151117114241/https://royalsociety.org/people/michael-levitt-11810/ . 17 November 2015 . Professor Michael Levitt FRS . London . Royalsociety.org . Anon. 2001 . One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
  42. Web site: Michael Levitt. Member Directory. National Academy of Sciences. 6 November 2016.
  43. Web site: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2013 . Nobelprize.org . 22 March 2017.
  44. Web site: 2014 ASBMB Annual Awards: DeLano Award for Computational Biosciences. Asbmb.org. 22 January 2015. 22 January 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150122054513/http://www.asbmb.org/asbmbtoday/201403/Awards/Levitt/. dead.
  45. Web site: Feb 20, 2015: Meet the ISCB Fellows Class of 2015 . Iscb.org . 22 March 2017 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20150220233807/http://www.iscb.org/iscb-news-items/2392-2015feb20-meet-the-iscb-fellows-class-of-2015 . 20 February 2015 .
  46. News: Pileggi . Tamar . Tiny Israel a Nobel heavyweight, especially in chemistry . . 9 October 2013 . 22 March 2017.
  47. News: Solomon . Shoshanna . Israelis lose out to US-German trio for Nobel medicine prize . . 22 March 2017.

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