Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

About the PNAS Member Editor
Name Beratan, David N.
Location Duke University
Primary Field Chemistry
Secondary Field Biophysics and Computational Biology
 Research Interests
Dr. Beratan studies the physical origins of function in molecules and molecular assemblies, especially structures that underpin energy transduction in living systems. He also develops strategies to optimize the properties of functional structures. David contributed to the development of “pathway” models for: electron tunneling, hopping, bifurcation, and flickering resonance transport in biological macromolecules. He also helped to establish coupling pathway models for Dexter mechanism electronic energy transport and infra-red gated electron transport. He established strategies to optimize the non-linear electronic response of organic structures and to assign the absolute stereochemistries of natural products through the computation of chiroptical properties; he helped to establish the concepts of chiral imprinting and of inverse molecular design. David’s ongoing studies focus on: the molecular mechanisms of electron bifurcation reactions in biological and bioinspired structures, charge transport over micrometer to centimeter distances in living systems, the physical origins of spin filtering in chiral structures, triplet exciton transport, and the design of de novo proteins with novel redox function.

 
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