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Show Curtis L Atkin to receive doctors degree Curtis L. Atkin, son of Mr. and Mrs. Floyd Atkin of Cedar City, early this month completed com-pleted work for the PhD degree de-gree in Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, Ber-keley, where he was a graduate grad-uate student n the laboratory of Professor J. B. Neilands, Dept. of Biochemistry. Dr. Atkin's dissertation research re-search dealt with iron metab-ilism metab-ilism of microorganisms, taxonomy tax-onomy of yeasts, induction of mushrooms from certain fungi, fun-gi, and nechanisms of infection infec-tion of fungal plant-parasites such as rusts, smuts, and powdery mildews. At Berkeley, Berke-ley, Dr. Atkin was supportted by a National Science Founda. lion Graduate Fellowship and by several research grants from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Atkin graduated from Cedar High School in 1959. He then attended BYU for several sever-al years in the honors program pro-gram and wa.s the recipient of Texaco and Kennecitt scholarships schol-arships as well as awards for the outstanding freshman chemistry student and organic organ-ic chemistry student. At BYU he was active in the Speleo Club (cave exploring) and was a member of Phi Eta Sigma and Phi Kappa Phi scholastic honor societies. In 1962 Dr. Atkin transferred to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) Pasa-, Pasa-, dena, where he ranked "right in the middle of the class" and from which he graduated in 1964 with a BS in chemistry. chemis-try. At Calatech he was active in ocean sailboat racing and was commodore of the sailing club. Following graduation and before beginning graduate gradu-ate work at Berkeley, Dr. Atkin At-kin was an analytical chemist for North American-Rockwell Science Center, Thousand Oaks Calif. - After visiting family and friends in Cedar City, Dr. Atkin At-kin will leave for two or three years' research in Sweden. He was awarded postdoctoral fellowships fel-lowships from the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, and from the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation. Founda-tion. He accepted the latter fellowship and will be working, work-ing, with -Prof. Peter Reichard at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm on the iron- containing con-taining enzyme "ribonucleotide "ribonucleo-tide reductase." This ensyme synthesizes all the deoxyri-bonucleotide deoxyri-bonucleotide pieces which are linked together by other enzymes en-zymes to form deoxyribonucleic deoxyribon-ucleic acid or DNA, which contains con-tains the genetic information n all lving things. Dr. Atkin will try to determine how iron, necessary for -enzymatic activity, activ-ity, is involved in this mea-bolic mea-bolic step. Also he will be investigating in-vestigating the mechanism of action of some anti -cancer drugs which appear to function func-tion by removing iron from the Enzyme. |