In memory of our friend David Johnson

 

David Alfred Johnson Ph.D

2 September 1931 -  4 February 2025

All of us of project GRFT lost a very good friend today

David was one of the project GRFT team from the start.  He specialized in hardware engineering and development. He took charge of particle bombardment technology being used by project GRFT.  He had an interest in this and stated that he thought there were many applications which this technology would be used for in the future and this was only the beginning.  He was inspired by the DIY gene gun that had been built at BioCurious by Jay Hanson.  Based on this design, he built two DIY gene guns for project GRFT. He designed 3D printed nozzles that were optimized for particle spread.  David made many tests with the Gene guns to get the gas pressure adjusted for best cell penetration.  He learned the basics of plant molecular biology in an amazingly short time and helped to get the contamination issues that we were having under control.  

Project GRFT is where it is today, with the micropropagation pipeline in place and gene gun working for transformations, largely because of the knowledge, experience and skills he brought to us.   I personally enjoyed every minute in the lab with David, and I am sure that all of us who had the pleasure of knowing him can say the same.  He was at most of our meetings over the years.  Sometimes he would have trouble with the audio settings on his device, but he would get that working and then have insights to share with us.  

David was thoughtful with the analytical skill set of a great scientist.  He worked very hard and got a lot accomplished. I was always hugely impressed by his abilities to work with a number of different technologies, and to see clearly how they all interact.  Besides being a top scientist and inventor, David had may interests and abilities, for example as an artist and a poet.  David had heart problems.  He said he wasn't in much pain but that he got tired easily.  Little over a week ago during one on the walks that he took for fresh air and exercise, his heart gave out and he collapsed which caused multiple severe injuries.  He was taken to Highland Hospital.  I went to visit him, and he was having trouble breathing. He couldn't swallow or talk.  His wife Leticia was staying with him at the hospital and caring for him tenderly.  I came back the next day, the doctors had changed his meds.  He was breathing without a struggle and looked peaceful.  

      

Ph.D. Physics (1972)

University of Hawaii. Honolulu, HI.

Dr. Johnson worked as a physist at UC Berkeley Lawrence Lab and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

He did much pioneering work with high energy physics.

Dr. Johnson was the founder, director, and president of TiNi Alloy Company where he managed a research team engaged in development of products using shape-memory alloys.

He owns multiple patents and has published papers.

One of his inventions has travelled to the planet Mars

                               David Johnson and Hector Vera

Another confirmation of the power of GRFT

 "Quite possibly, the most encouraging inhibitor of MERS-CoV is Griffithsin, a 12.7 kDa lectin found in the Griffithsia species (red-green growth). It has three sugar restricting areas that permit it to tie accurately to glycans on CoV protein spikes and forestall viral connection to have cells, with extraordinary strength exhibited in vitro concentrates against MERS-CoV (EC50 of 0.125 M) and various CoV strains (EC50 of 0.00320.33 M) (Millet et al., 2016). Griffithsin additionally seems to have a low foundational poisonousness, with an explicitness list of 303100 against HcoV cells (contrasted with human colorectal adenocarcinoma or fibroblast cell lines) (O’Keefe et al., 2010), demonstrating that it very well may be one of the leading contenders for the animal and clinical preliminaries against SARS-CoV-2 (Mani et al., 2020)."

excerpt from:

In silico investigation and potential therapeutic approaches of natural products for COVID-19: Computer-aided drug design perspective

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2022.929430/full

First phase 1 clinical study of GRFT for prevention of HIV

 Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine completed phase one clinical study of a griffithsin topical.  This is designed to be applied as a gel to the vagina before sex to inhibit HIV infection.  Phase one trials are done are to see what effect the pharmaceutical has on healthy humans.   The results of this study are very promising,  This is a huge step forward, and we look forward to the next phases of clinical trials.

Here's a link to the paper:

 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0261775 

Meanwhile our group is looking into what the optimal pH of a buffer for adhesion of DNA to W and AU microparticles would be.   We would like to hear from anyone who has done particle bombardment on the subject of what buffers worked best.