I was born in Jeremie, Haiti. I came to the USA when I was thirteen. Like Bugs Bunny, I spent my formative years in Brooklyn, New York City. I lived in the colorful, lively, and character-building Bedford-Stuyvesant section. After obtaining my Bachelor’s in Biochemistry from the State University of New York at Stony Brook New York, I studied for my Ph.D. under Dr. Gobind Khorana at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and applied his then novel approach of oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis to structure-function studies of the proton-pumping membrane protein bacteriorhodopsin. Later, during a postdoctoral with Dr. Donald Helinski at U.C. San Diego, I discovered that the FixL protein contains heme and identified this protein as the first known direct sensor of molecular oxygen. Since then I have devoted my research to understanding the mechanisms by which organisms respond to oxygen and other physiological gases. FixL is an enzyme (a protein histidine kinase) whose activity is controlled by a regulatory heme on the same molecule. I next took my research to the laboratory of Dr. Max Perutz at the Medical Research Council in England, where I made great progress in elucidating the mechanism by which the FixL protein responds to oxygen. In my own laboratory, we discovered that FixL belongs to a family of sensors with heme-binding Per-ARNT-Sim (PAS) domains, only some which are protein histidine kinases. Other members of this family include cyclic di-GMP phosphodiesterases and transcription factors. Our work has expanded to examine these related signal transducers that span all three major kingdoms of life and govern a variety of interesting adaptations to fluctuating levels of gases.
