From intestine transport to enzymatic regulation: The works of the Spanish biochemist Alberto Sols (1917–1989)

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Abstract

In this paper the scientific trajectory of Spanish influential biochemist Alberto Sols (1917–1989) is presented in comparative perspective. His social and academic environment, his research training under the Cori's in the US in the early 1950s and his works when coming back to Spain to develop his own scientific career are described in order to present the central argument of this paper on his path from physiological research to research on enzymatic regulation. Sols' main contributions were both scientific and academic. He and his collaborators not only contributed to biological knowledge on the biochemistry of metabolic regulation but to the active reception of biochemistry in the Spanish academia and to update of Spanish medical education.

Section snippets

Early years until obtaining a PhD12

Born in 1917, Alberto Sols grew up in Sax (Alicante), a village near the Levante coast where his father worked as a public notary. His father died in 1929, and thanks to a special scholarship from the Jesuit school of San José in Valencia (capital city of the region) he was able to attend secondary education in such a distinguished centre from 1929 until 1932. In 1932 the new Constitution of the Spanish Second Republic forbade the religious orders from teaching at any level, and the Society of

Introduction to carbohydrate metabolism

Although still very interested in sugar transport through the intestine and phosphorylation, Sols was given a very different project by Carl Cori as soon as he arrived at Washington University. Cori suggested that he work on the inhibition of brain hexokinase, with Robert K. Crane, who had arrived in St. Louis in 1950 after working at Massachusetts General Hospital with Fritz Lipmann.31

Scientists already

Toward allostery

But Sols considered his main achievement at Washington University to be:

the last and most important paper in the series of four in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the one reporting the discovery that `brain hexokinase possesses, in addition to the binding sites for substrates and ATP, a third specific site for glucose-6-phosphate', as `part of an intrinsic cellular mechanism for the control of the hexokinase reaction' postulating that 'the mechanism of inhibition must involve, after the

The return to Spain

Sols returned to Spain in January of 1954, but it was not until September that he obtained a laboratory in the basements of the University of Madrid's School of Medicine. At the beginning, the laboratory had no gas provision, and had electricity only two days a week. But even without any up-to-date facilities, in 1955 Sols had already obtained some data on the phosphorylation of sugars in intestinal mucosa homogenates, which related to his early research issue on Verzár's hypothesis. Both his

Beginnings on regulation

In the early 1970s, using baker's yeast, Sols, together with Gertrudis de la Fuente, produced results that supported Koshland's induced fit. A postdoctoral research fellow, De la Fuente remained part of Sols' group and became one of his closest collaborators.

The induced fit

After also beginning research on pyruvate kinase in yeast jointly with Carlos Gancedo and Juana Marı́a Sempere during the mid 1960s, and after publishing some reviews that included his results on regulation in the light of recent advancements in the field, Sols, De la Fuente and some of their collaborators continued to work on specificity of transport. Previous papers of the group discussed the existence of a stereospecific transport system versus that of an `ordinary' enzyme, when interpreting

Conclusions

Sols' and De la Fuente's works on hexokinase induced fit has been considered by his colleagues as the very first evidence for Koshland's hypothesis of the induced fit. They produced results which supported other researchers' models. Thus, while remaining part of the centre of knowledge production they did not make new proposals but supported those made elsewhere, where questions that would lead to answers were posed. Establishing strong commitments with such a centre seems to have been a useful

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Gertrudis De la Fuente, Juan José Aragón and Margarita Salas for helping me in the comprehension of Sols' scientific trajectory and research programme, and also Sols' family for permission to consult his papers. I gratefully acknowledge Soraya de Chadarevian, Jean-Paul Gaudillière, Frederic L. Holmes, Emilio Muñoz, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and the anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions, also Angela Creager for discussion on the diffusion of knowledge on metabolic

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