Wikipedia

Wladek Minor

Władysław Minor also known as Wladek Minor (born 1946) is a Polish-American biophysicist, a specialist in structural biology and protein crystallography. He is a Harrison Distinguished Professor of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics at the University of Virginia.[5] Minor is a co-author of HKL2000/HKL3000 – crystallographic data processing and structure solution software used to process data and solve structures of macromolecules, as well as small molecules.[6][7] He is a co-founder of HKL Research, a company that distributes the software. He is also a co-author of a public repository of diffraction images (proteindiffraction.org) for some of the protein structures available in the Protein Data Bank and other software tools for structural biology.

Władysław Minor
Wladek Minor in 2016
BornMay 1946
Alma materUniversity of Warsaw (MA) University of Warsaw (PhD)
Occupationbiophysicist
Known forresearch on structural biology and protein crystallography
AwardsFellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2018)[1][2]
Fellow of the American Crystallographic Association (2018)[3]
Recipient of the PIASA Tadeusz Sendzimir Applied Science Award (2020)[4]
Websiteminorlab.org

Early life and education

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Władysław Minor was born in Poland in May 1946. He obtained his M.Sc. degree in 1969 (supervisor - Bronisław Buras) and his Ph.D. degree in 1977 (supervisor - Izabela Sosnowska) from the Physics Department at the University of Warsaw.[8] He moved to the United States in 1985 at the age of 39.[8]

Career and research

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Minor's main focus of interest during the Ph.D. studies was solid-state physics. For several years after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Warsaw, he continued to work in this area of research.

After moving to the United States in 1985 and working with Michael Rossmann at Purdue University, he gradually switched into the field of macromolecular crystallography.[8] While at Purdue, Minor started a collaboration with Zbyszek Otwinowski [pl], with whom they developed software for processing X-ray diffraction data (Denzo, Scalepack, XDisplayF). Their paper “Processing of X-ray diffraction data collected in oscillation mode” published in 1997 [6] was listed as number 23 in the list of 100 most-cited research papers of all times.[9] As of 2021, this paper has been cited over 41000 times (according to Google Scholar).[10]

In 1995, Minor joined the University of Virginia as a faculty member. Around the same time, he and Zbyszek Otwinowski founded HKL Research.

Starting from 2000, his lab was a part of two Protein Structure Initiative centers: the Midwest Center for Structural Genomic (MSCG)[11] and the New York Structural Genomics Research Consortium (NYSGRC).[12] The lab was also a part of the Center for Structural Genomics of Infectious Diseases (CSGID)[13] and the Enzyme Function Initiative. The Minor lab developed and maintained data management and structure solution tools, as well as performed quality control of the crystal structures and conducted determination of some of the structures.[8]

The Minor lab has developed many other software tools for structural biology, including proteindiffraction.org (a public repository of diffraction images),[14] CMM (a server for validation of metal-binding sites in macromolecular structures),[15] CheckMyBlob (a machine learning system that automatically detects and validates ligands in X-ray electron density map),[16] and LabDB (a laboratory information management system for structural biology).[17]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Wladek Minor became involved in the improvement of SARS-Cov-2 macromolecular crystal structures[18] and published several scientific publications on the subject,[19][20][21] as well as a publication on molecular determinants of vascular transport of dexamethasone in COVID-19 therapy.[22] His research on COVID-19 has been reported by multiple media outlets.[23][24][25][26]

Minor's lab has produced over 240 scientific publications and over 450 crystal structures of proteins.[27] As of 2021, his papers were cited over 55000 times (according to Google Scholar).[10]

Awards and honors

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Personal life

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Wladek Minor is married to Iwona Minor. They have two sons.[8]

References

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  1. ^ a b "LEADING SCIENCE ORGANIZATION ADDS FIVE MORE FROM UVA AS FELLOWS". UVAToday. Retrieved 2021-04-14.
  2. ^ a b "Elected Fellows". AAAS. Retrieved 2021-04-14.
  3. ^ a b "Fellows of the American Crystallographic Association". American Crystallographic Association. Retrieved 2021-04-14.
  4. ^ a b "The Tadeusz Sendzimir Award". Sendzimir Award Recipients. Retrieved 2023-11-01.
  5. ^ "Minor, Wladek".
  6. ^ a b Otwinowski, Zbyszek; Minor, Wladek (1997). "Processing of X-ray diffraction data collected in oscillation mode". Macromolecular Crystallography Part A. Methods in Enzymology. Vol. 276. pp. 307–326. doi:10.1016/S0076-6879(97)76066-X. ISBN 978-0-12-182177-7. PMID 27799103.
  7. ^ Minor, Wladek; Cymborowski, Marcin; Otwinowski, Zbyszek; Chruszcz, Maksymilian (1 August 2006). "HKL -3000: the integration of data reduction and structure solution – from diffraction images to an initial model in minutes". Acta Crystallographica Section D: Biological Crystallography. 62 (8): 859–866. Bibcode:2006AcCrD..62..859M. doi:10.1107/S0907444906019949. PMID 16855301.
  8. ^ a b c d e Jaskolski, Mariusz; Wlodawer, Alexander; Dauter, Zbigniew; Shabalin, Ivan; Chruszcz, Maksymilian (21 January 2021). "Celebrating the 75th birthday of Professor Wladek Minor, one of the most accomplished Polish-American structural biologists". Acta Biochimica Polonica. 68 (1): 1–4. doi:10.18388/abp.2020_5539. PMID 33476109.
  9. ^ Van Noorden, Richard; Maher, Brendan; Nuzzo, Regina (30 October 2014). "The top 100 papers". Nature. 514 (7524): 550–553. Bibcode:2014Natur.514..550V. doi:10.1038/514550a. PMID 25355343. S2CID 4466906.
  10. ^ a b Wladek Minor publications indexed by Google Scholar)
  11. ^ "Midwest Center for Structural Genomics | Argonne National Laboratory". www.anl.gov.
  12. ^ "NYSGRC". www.nysgxrc.org.
  13. ^ "Center for Structural Genomics of Infectious Diseases". csgid.org.
  14. ^ Grabowski, Marek; Langner, Karol M.; Cymborowski, Marcin; Porebski, Przemyslaw J.; Sroka, Piotr; Zheng, Heping; Cooper, David R.; Zimmerman, Matthew D.; Elsliger, Marc-André; Burley, Stephen K.; Minor, Wladek (1 November 2016). "A public database of macromolecular diffraction experiments". Acta Crystallographica Section D. 72 (11): 1181–1193. Bibcode:2016AcCrD..72.1181G. doi:10.1107/S2059798316014716. PMC 5108346. PMID 27841751.
  15. ^ Zheng, Heping; Cooper, David R.; Porebski, Przemyslaw J.; Shabalin, Ivan G.; Handing, Katarzyna B.; Minor, Wladek (1 March 2017). "CheckMyMetal : a macromolecular metal-binding validation tool". Acta Crystallographica Section D. 73 (3): 223–233. Bibcode:2017AcCrD..73..223Z. doi:10.1107/S2059798317001061. PMC 5349434. PMID 28291757. S2CID 13636890.
  16. ^ Kowiel, Marcin; Brzezinski, Dariusz; Porebski, Przemyslaw J; Shabalin, Ivan G; Jaskolski, Mariusz; Minor, Wladek (1 February 2019). "Automatic recognition of ligands in electron density by machine learning". Bioinformatics. 35 (3): 452–461. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/bty626. PMC 6361236. PMID 30016407.
  17. ^ Cooper, David R.; Grabowski, Marek; Zimmerman, Matthew D.; Porebski, Przemyslaw J.; Shabalin, Ivan G.; Woinska, Magdalena; Domagalski, Marcin J.; Zheng, Heping; Sroka, Piotr; Cymborowski, Marcin; Czub, Mateusz P.; Niedzialkowska, Ewa; Venkataramany, Barat S.; Osinski, Tomasz; Fratczak, Zbigniew; Bajor, Jacek; Gonera, Juliusz; MacLean, Elizabeth; Wojciechowska, Kamila; Konina, Krzysztof; Wajerowicz, Wojciech; Chruszcz, Maksymilian; Minor, Wladek (2021). "State-of-the-Art Data Management: Improving the Reproducibility, Consistency, and Traceability of Structural Biology and in Vitro Biochemical Experiments". Structural Genomics. Methods in Molecular Biology. Vol. 2199. pp. 209–236. doi:10.1007/978-1-0716-0892-0_13. ISBN 978-1-0716-0891-3. PMC 8019398. PMID 33125653.
  18. ^ https://covid-19.bioreproducibility.org/
  19. ^ Grabowski, Marek; Macnar, Joanna M.; Cymborowski, Marcin; Cooper, David R.; Shabalin, Ivan G.; Gilski, Miroslaw; Brzezinski, Dariusz; Kowiel, Marcin; Dauter, Zbigniew; Rupp, Bernhard; Wlodawer, Alexander; Jaskolski, Mariusz; Minor, Wladek (1 May 2021). "Rapid response to emerging biomedical challenges and threats". IUCrJ. 8 (3): 395–407. Bibcode:2021IUCrJ...8..395G. doi:10.1107/S2052252521003018. PMC 8086160. PMID 33953926.
  20. ^ Brzezinski, Dariusz; Kowiel, Marcin; Cooper, David R.; Cymborowski, Marcin; Grabowski, Marek; Wlodawer, Alexander; Dauter, Zbigniew; Shabalin, Ivan G.; Gilski, Miroslaw; Rupp, Bernhard; Jaskolski, Mariusz; Minor, Wladek (January 2021). "Covid-19.bioreproducibility.org: A web resource for SARS-CoV -2-related structural models". Protein Science. 30 (1): 115–124. doi:10.1002/pro.3959. ISSN 0961-8368. PMC 7537053. PMID 32981130.
  21. ^ Wlodawer, Alexander; Dauter, Zbigniew; Shabalin, Ivan G.; Gilski, Miroslaw; Brzezinski, Dariusz; Kowiel, Marcin; Minor, Wladek; Rupp, Bernhard; Jaskolski, Mariusz (September 2020). "Ligand-centered assessment of SARS-CoV-2 drug target models in the Protein Data Bank". The FEBS Journal. 287 (17): 3703–3718. doi:10.1111/febs.15366. PMC 7276724. PMID 32418327.
  22. ^ Shabalin, Ivan G.; Czub, Mateusz P.; Majorek, Karolina A.; Brzezinski, Dariusz; Grabowski, Marek; Cooper, David R.; Panasiuk, Mateusz; Chruszcz, Maksymilian; Minor, Wladek (1 November 2020). "Molecular determinants of vascular transport of dexamethasone in COVID-19 therapy". IUCrJ. 7 (6): 1048–1058. Bibcode:2020IUCrJ...7.1048S. doi:10.1107/S2052252520012944. PMC 7553145. PMID 33063792.
  23. ^ "UVa researcher says central information system needed before next pandemic". The Daily Progress. Retrieved 2021-04-14.
  24. ^ "Coronavirus caught us all off guard. Can we prevent a future pandemic?". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 2021-04-14.
  25. ^ "Research finds conditions like diabetes may impact effectiveness of COVID-19 treatment". CBS19News. Retrieved 2021-04-14.
  26. ^ "Working to understand protein structures in COVID-19". CBS19News. Retrieved 2021-04-14.
  27. ^ "Minor Laboratory". minorlab.org.
  28. ^ "2020 PIASA Awards Announcements". The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America. 5 February 2021. Retrieved 2021-04-14.
  29. ^ "Prof. Władek Minor laureatem nagrody UW-AFUW 2018". Uniwersytet Warszawski (in Polish). 30 November 2018. Retrieved 2021-04-14.
  30. ^ "UVa's inventor award goes to physicist Minor" (PDF). minorlab.org. Retrieved 2021-04-14.
  31. ^ "U.VA. PATENT FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES 2007 INVENTOR OF THE YEAR". UVAToday. Retrieved 2021-04-14.
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Scholia has a profile for Wladek Minor (Q28028610).

Examples of software tools developed by Minor and his lab:

  • HKL Research (an official site of the company that distributes HKL2000/HKL3000)
  • proteindiffraction.org (a public repository of diffraction images)
  • CMM (a server for validation of metal-binding sites in macromolecular structures)
  • CheckMyBlob (a machine learning system that automatically detects and validates ligands in X-ray electron density maps)
  • Molstack (an online platform for sharing electron density maps and their interpretations)
  • Fitmunk (a server for a framework for fitting side-chain conformations on a fixed backbone into electron density)
  • MgRNA (a server for classification of Mg binding sites in RNA crystal structures)
  • 2HADH Knowledgebase (a server for 2HADH enzymes classification and structural and enzymatic data)
  • LabDB (an instance of a laboratory information management system for structural biology)
  • Validated SARS-CoV-2 related structural models (a repository for validated SARS-CoV-2 related structural models of potential drug targets)
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