Eva Julia Neer was an American physician, biochemist, and cell-biology scientist who gained U.S. national research awards for her discoveries on G-protein subunit structure and function. She described the physiological roles of these subunits as an integrated and versatile molecular system of signal transduction for membrane-receptor regulation of cell function. Her research concepts turned her into a world leader in G-protein studies and impinged widely on the general understanding of cell behavior.
Biography
Born Eva Augenblick in Warsaw, came to New York at age eight with her parents and grew up in Queens and Scarsdale. Eva's family fled Nazi-occupied Warsaw in 1939, emigrated first to Brazil, and soon after to the U.S.. Her parents held academic posts in Poland which they were unable to pursue in the US, but somehow inspired in Eva her love for scholarly endeavors. She graduated with honors from Bronxville High School in 1955, being awarded a Regent’s college scholarship by the State Education Department. Eva Augenblick attended Radcliffe and graduated from Barnard College in 1959. A list of student acquaintances of hers at college would include notable achievers such as economist Fischer Black, psychologist Robert L. Helmreich , and cardiologist Robert M. Neer whom she married. Eva graduated as a physician at Columbia University in 1963. Three years later she joined Harvard University where she worked continuously for more than three decades. Eva Neer has been singled out for her "efforts to help women advance up the academic ladder". She died of complications from breast cancer in 2001, survived by her husband and two sons, Robert and Richard. A personal account of Eva Neer´s professional life was given by her close colleague David E. Clapham in an obituary note.
Academic career
Eva joined Harvard research staff in 1966. She was appointed Assistant Professor in Biochemistry in 1976, and full professor in 1991. She was ascribed to the Cardiology Division at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Neer served on the Board of Tutors in Biochemical Sciences at Harvard, as well as on the Harvard Students Research Committee at the Harvard Medical School. She combined the tools of chemistry, biology, physics and molecular biology to explain how cells interpret the messages they get from light, hormones and neurotransmitters. The author of numerous papers, she was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and earned membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was honored with the FASEB prize for basic research in 1987 and the American Heart Association’s basic research prize in 1996. She was also an adviser to the National Institutes of Health.
Research
Eva Neer's early research, performed under the guidance of Professor Guido Guidotti, was devoted to study aspects of hemoglobin chemistry. These included the role of sulfhydril groups of alpha and beta chains on the quaternary conformation of the molecule. She showed their importance in subunit interface interaction and functional cooperativity for oxygen binding. This binding is an essential property for oxygen transport in blood and is often referred as Bohr effect. While still at Guidotti's lab Eva undertook independent research on the biochemical mechanisms of vasopressin's action on kidney's distal tubules. She described the purification and kinetic properties of vasopressin-sensitive adenylate cyclase from rat renal medulla. It would be later shown that vasopressin acts through a G protein-coupled receptor. This was the topic of Eva's work for most of her research career. In order to dissect out different aspects of G protein messaging complexities Eva studied a variety of tissues including brain cortex, rat testis, pigeon erythrocytes, heart, brain, retina-rods. Some of her most cited research findings include:
Purification and properties of free and membrane-bound adenylate cyclase
Size and detergent binding of adenylate cyclase from bovine cerebral cortex
The site of alpha-chymotryptic activation of pigeon erythrocyte adenylate cyclase
Calmodulin activates the isolated catalytic unit of brain adenylate cyclase
Location and function of reactive sulfhydryl groups of alpha subunit 39
Action of G protein subunits on the cardiac muscarinic K+ channel
Cloning and differential expression of alpha-subunit types in human tissues and cell types
alpha-s and alpha-o synthesis in GH3 cells
Structure-function aspects of activation of PLC by G protein subunits: site mutation studies.
Along her career, Professor Neer authored a number of highly cited review articles on structural and functional aspects of G protein and its subunits.
