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Professor Cees Veeger and the early years of bioinorganic chemistry

2018; Wiley; Volume: 285; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/febs.14470

1742-4658

Bob Crichton, Fred K. Hagen,

Amino Acid Enzymes and Metabolism

Cornelis Veeger, or Cees (pronounced as ‘case’) for everyone except officialdom, was born in The Netherlands on 26 August 1929. Coming from a modest background, he worked his way through college at the University of Amsterdam, where he graduated in 1960 with biochemist E. C. Slater on a thesis entitled ‘The reaction mechanism of diaphorase’. This pig heart enzyme is nowadays known as the flavoprotein dihydrolipoamide dehydrogenase, part of the pyruvate dehydrogenase multi-enzyme complex. Only 4 years later he was appointed full professor to a newly created Chair and Department of Biochemistry at Wageningen University where he worked until his retirement in 1995. His initial years in science, being very much centred on the theme of flavins, brought him fruitful collaborations and lasting friendships with multiple specialists of the time such as Vince Massey, Kunio Yagi and Peter Hemmerich. In his 1965 Inaugural Address for the Wageningen Chair he proposed to the University Board to bid for the prospective European Molecular Biology Laboratory (which was eventually in 1971 assigned to Heidelberg) with the argument that such an integrated, international, multidisciplinary environment was precisely what was needed to boost biochemical research. As a key example he cited a then-running US–European collaboration on redox biochemistry of iron–sulfur proteins in which physical chemists explored electronic properties, inorganic chemists built models and biochemists dealt with the biosynthesis of the clusters. From then on he developed this early bioinorganic chemical vision in his own work starting with a long-lasting research effort on nitrogenase, followed in due course with multiple and multi-faceted projects on iron–sulfur cluster- and haem-containing enzymes, partially documented in the 59 PhD theses that he supervised (Fig. 1). In those years the evangelist of bioinorganic chemistry in Cees must have seen the light of day. In 1975 he was appointed the first Associate Editor (later, till 1988, one of the Managing Editors) of the European Journal of Biochemistry (now The FEBS Journal) to relieve the task of the then single Managing Editor, Claude Liébecq, and to deal with physico-chemical and enzymology papers. This led in 1979 to the creation of the subdivision Physical Biochemistry, which was in 1988 extended to cover Physical and Inorganic Biochemistry. (Some years later the Board apparently decided that Bioinorganic Chemistry had by then grown big enough, and the subdivision was eliminated). In the course of his scientific career Cees published close to 100 of his papers in the European Journal of Biochemistry. In 1991 Cees participated in the founding of the European Medal for Bio-Inorganic Chemistry, which has been awarded every other year since 1994 for excellence and impact in the field of bioinorganic chemistry. In 1995 he was one of the founders of the Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry (SBIC) and its journal, the Journal of Biological Inorganic Chemistry (JBIC). In 1996 he organised, with Martin Feiters and Fred Hagen, the third edition of EUROBIC, the European Conference on Bio-Inorganic Chemistry. From early on Cees was also particularly active as a promotor and activator of the teaching of bioinorganic chemistry. In 1983 the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS) meeting was held in Brussels, organised by the Societé Belge de Biochimie, and two half-day sessions were co-organised by Bob Crichton on metalloproteins, the first time that metals had featured as such in the programme of a FEBS meeting. There had been a number of other European meetings on metals in biology leading up to this, notably a celebrated one in the spring of 1983 in Tomar, Portugal, organised by Antonio Xavier. The first of the series of International Conferences on Bioinorganic Chemistry (ICBICs, today known as International Conferences on Biological Inorganic Chemistry), initiated by Ivano Bertini, Harry Gray, Bo Malmstrom and Helmut Sigel, coincidentally also took place in 1983 in Florence organised by Ivano Bertini. So there were a reasonable number of biochemists and chemists with metalloprotein interests at the 1983 Brussels FEBS meeting. At the end of the FEBS meeting, a lively discussion developed over a few beers in the bar of the Sheraton Hotel in the centre of Brussels among a number of colleagues, including Antonio Xavier, Barry Smith, Pauline Harrison, Cees Veeger and Bob Crichton. The need to find a means of promoting this hybrid science (Inorganic Biochemistry to some, Bioinorganic Chemistry to others) was discussed, and they settled on the idea of applying to FEBS, since they had funds available for the organisation of Advanced Courses. So, Cees and Bob applied to organise a FEBS Advanced Course, including both lectures and hands-on practicals on the diverse techniques that could be used to study metal ions. It was decided to hold it in the embryonic new university town of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, which had the necessary facilities available in the hotel on the outskirts of the new town and in the Chemistry Department, within which the Biochemistry unit directed by Bob was located. The first meeting duly took place from 28 April to 4 May 1985 with around 30 participants, and was followed by regular courses, and the rest, as they say, is history (Fig. 2). One of the participants, from CIBA-Geigy (today Novartis), remarked that the quality of the course was well up to the standard of the jokes told by the organisers (notably Cees). The faculty on this first course included Bob Williams, Jan Reedijk, Helmut Beinert (on sabbatical in Konstanz), Alfred Trautwein, Dave Garner, Ernesto Carafoli, Daniel Mansuy, Simon Albracht, Hans Ruf, Cees and Bob, and among the participants, Fred Hagen (who took over responsibility for the EPR component from Tore Vänngård after the first course until now). Over the years, a number of the faculty have become almost permanent fixtures, including Peter Kroneck, who joined us in 1986. Indeed, the list of faculty over the years reads like a ‘who's who’ of European biological inorganic chemistry (as the field is now designated), including many of the recipients of the EUROBIC medal (Fred Hagen, Claudio Luchinat, Fraser Armstrong, Simon Albracht, Peter Kroneck, Antonio Xavier, Roland Sigel and Angela Casini). Cees's teaching in the early versions of the Advanced Course went under the banner ‘Don't waste good thoughts on dirty protein’ (which he allegedly took from bio-spectroscopist Gregorio Weber), and was intended as an eye opener, especially for spectroscopists, on statistics and reproducibility of the determination of protein and elements in prosthetic groups. His lecture ran in combination with a lab course in which large amounts of sulfite reductase from Desulfovibrio (a byproduct of research on sulfate reducers in Cees's own lab) were consumed by students in attempts to determine stoichiometries of iron and acid-labile sulfur, the proper values of which could win them a bottle of excellent wine from the restaurant. Cees and Bob continued to organise the Advanced Courses, initially funded by FEBS, subsequently from 1991 to 1997 by an ESF programme (Chemistry of Metals in Biological Systems), then by an EU Framework programme grant (MASIMO). After Cees retired, the task of co-organiser was very actively assumed by Ricardo Louro in 2008, and the courses have continued with financial support from FEBS and the COST programme of the ESF since 2009. To date over 1300 students from all over Europe and other places on the globe have been trained, many of whom are still active in the field today. It is no coincidence that over the past few years, more than half of the faculty have been former participants of earlier courses. Each course generates a network of researchers who remain in contact over the years, and get together as a group at EUROBIC and ICBIC meetings. Together with his scientific contributions, there can be no more lasting tribute to the vision, the constant questioning and the boundless enthusiasm in the training of and interaction with young students that was the hallmark of Cees than the Louvain-la-Neuve courses. His numerous pupils will continue carrying his banner for the unequivocal importance of metal ions in living cells.