The Determination of the Basic Amino Acids of Proteins: the Work of Hubert Vickery

THE BASIC AMINO ACIDS OF HORSE HEMOGLOBINJournal of Biological ChemistryVol. 79Issue 2Preview Full-Text PDF Open Access The Basic Amino Acids of Horse Hemoglobin (Vickery, H. B., and Leavenworth, C. S. (1928) J. Biol. Chem. 79, 377–388) Hubert Bradford Vickery (1893–1978) was born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. He first became interested in chemistry when he was 12 years old and his father gave him the book Fourteen Weeks in Chemistry by J. Dorman Steele as a Christmas present. He soon learned all the symbols for the elements and began carrying out his first experiments. Vickery entered Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia in 1912 and finished with honors in chemistry and chemical physics in 1915. After graduating from Dalhousie, Vickery taught high school physics and worked as an analytical chemist with Imperial Oil Ltd. for several years. He entered graduate school at Yale University in 1920, where he worked with Thomas B. Osborne studying the hydrolysis of the wheat protein gliadin. Osborne and Lafayette B. Mendel were the authors of a previous Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) Classic (1Osborne T.B. Mendel L.B. J. Biol. Chem. 1916; 25 (JBC Classics:): 1-12Abstract Full Text PDF Google ScholarOsborne T.B. Mendel L.B. J. Biol. Chem. 1917; 31: 149-163(http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/full/277/18/e7)Abstract Full Text PDF Google Scholar). Vickery received his Ph.D. in 1922 and was invited to join the staff of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven. Vickery was eventually appointed Chief Biochemist at the Agricultural Experiment Station in 1928. He remained there for the rest of his life, retiring in 1963 but continuing on as emeritus scientist. Vickery's initial research involved exploring the constituents of alfalfa. He was able to identify adenine, choline, and betaine but eventually became more interested in the determination of the basic amino acids of proteins, which is the subject of the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) Classic reprinted here. Although several scientists had been exploring the properties of different hemoglobins at the time this paper was published, few of them had done work on the quantitative isolation of amino acids from the proteins. Thus, Vickery carried out an analysis of the basic amino acids in horse hemoglobin and concluded that the protein contained 7.64% histidine, 3.32% arginine, and 8.10% lysine. These results were in agreement with the assumption that hemoglobin has 33 molecules of histidine, 13 molecules of arginine, and 37 molecules of lysine. Vickery later turned his attention to the proteins of green leaves, including those of the tobacco plant, and developed methods to determine the organic acids of the tobacco leaf. He also studied tobacco leaf metabolism, which allowed him to gather evidence to support the view that the organic acids are the central metabolites for the systems involved in carbohydrate and protein chemistry and in photosynthesis and respiration. With his postdoctoral fellow, Harold E. Clark, Vickery isolated glutamine from the stalk tissue of plants grown in ammonium salts, which led to a long series of investigations on glutamine. In the late 1930s Vickery was elected to the Editorial Committee of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, and in 1942 he joined the Journal's Editorial Board. At the time, Rudolf Anderson was managing editor of the Journal. For several years, Vickery dealt with more papers than Anderson did, often handling 120 to 130 annually. Vickery also served as the Journal's managing editor for 1 month each summer during Anderson's annual vacation. While serving on the Editorial Board, Vickery adopted the principle of returning all papers he received for review within 24 hours, stating “It does not seem decent to keep someone's manuscript for more than a day or two” (2Zelitch I. Biographical Memoir of Hubert Bradford Vickery.Vol. 55. National Academy of Sciences, Washington D. C.1985: 473-504Google Scholar). Vickery's experiences as editor led him to attempt to lessen the confusion existing around the nomenclature of amino acids. He proposed a system based on the use of the small capital letters d and l as prefixes. The system was accepted and came into use in 1952 when it was approved by The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. In recognition of his contributions to biochemistry, Vickery was awarded the Stephen Hales Prize by the American Society of Plant Physiologists in 1933. He also received the Charles Reid Barnes Life Membership Award of the American Society of Plant Physiologists in 1956 and was named the Samuel W. Johnson Distinguished Scientist Emeritus by the Experiment Station in 1969. He was also President of the American Society of Biological Chemists (now the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) in 1950. Vickery was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1943 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1948. 1Biographical information on Hubert Vickery was taken from Ref. 2Zelitch I. Biographical Memoir of Hubert Bradford Vickery.Vol. 55. National Academy of Sciences, Washington D. C.1985: 473-504Google Scholar. 1Biographical information on Hubert Vickery was taken from Ref. 2Zelitch I. Biographical Memoir of Hubert Bradford Vickery.Vol. 55. National Academy of Sciences, Washington D. C.1985: 473-504Google Scholar.

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