James Letts

Presented by Sidney Strickland on behalf of Roderick MacKinnon
B.Sc., University of Victoria
Functional and Structural Studies of the Human Voltage-gated Proton Channel

I apologize, James, for not being here in person to celebrate this well deserved accomplishment. Congratulations on your much deserved doctoral degree! There are few good excuses for missing this occasion, but I know you will agree that my excuse is acceptable: I was finally granted time on the Titan Krios Electron Microscope at HHMI, so it is for the pursuit of science that we love.
James joined our laboratory in 2008. He undertook the extremely challenging problem —
with full knowledge beforehand — of studying an ion channel called Hv, a voltage-dependent proton channel.

This channel is important, especially to the ability of white blood cells to combat bacterial infection. The channel is intrinsically unstable and thus had never been purified and reconstituted. An important question was still debated in the field: does Hv in the absence of other proteins really encode the channel?

James settled this debate through expression, purification and reconstitution. He developed a nice mathematical model to interpret the proton fluxes. He then learned and applied X-ray crystallographic and NMR methods to characterize many aspects of Hv channel structure, though a complete native structure of the ion channel still eludes us. James’ thesis work was technically of the highest quality and marked by cleverness and perseverance. He has now taken his mastered skills across the Atlantic to England, where he is studying in the laboratory of Leonid Sazanov.

James was a wonderful student to work with. We miss his enthusiasm for science, his critical comments in lab meeting, his “hey, let’s have a movie night,” and of course something will definitely be different at lab barbecues without a mad scientist brewing instant ice cream in a cloud of nitrogen vapor! Good luck, James. I look forward to great achievements in your scientific future.