This book begins with the creation of the elements used in life and how these elements, as atoms, bound together into organic compounds and polymerized into lipids, peptides, and nucleotides. The text stresses the role and importance of the elements C, H, O, N, P, S, the univalent and multivalent ions, and the requirement of liquid water to foster prebiotic life. Expert author Dr. David Stowe explains the role of early molecular interactions in developing the first living prokaryote bacteria and their eventual engulfment as organelles to make eukaryotes that allowed their sophistication into specialized cells and large multicellular organisms. The book uniquely traces the genesis of bioenergetics and uses cardiac cell mitochondia as an evolutionary example for modern bioenergetic function. This book is geared toward graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and other academics interested in evolutionary biochemistry with an emphasis on the early development of bioenergetics leading to modern, high energy mitochondria.
David Frank Stowe, MA, MD, PhD, Professor of Anesthesiology, Physiology, and Biomedical Engineering at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, attended the Free University of Berlin, Germany, and Indiana University, Bloomington, where he received BA and MA degrees in biology and cell biology. After lab bench experience working for a pharmaceutical firm, he went on to earn a PhD in Physiology at Michigan State University followed by a Cardiovascular Research Institute Fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. He first joined the Medical College of Wisconsin as Assistant Professor of Physiology; it is there where he later completed the MD degree and a residency in Anesthesiology. Dr. Stowe practiced clinically and trained anesthesiology residents for 35 years. He has received nearly 50 research grants and has mentored more than 200 graduate, medical, undergraduate, and post-doctoral fellows in basic science research projects. Dr. Stowe has collaborated and authored collectively over 200 book chapters, review articles, and original papers, and he has served on numerous national and international research merit review panels for funding of research projects and for review of journal articles.
His recent work involves: identification and activation of mitochondrial SKCa and BKCa channels and their cardioprotective mechanisms; biophysical mechanisms and roles of mitochondrial ion exchange channels (e.g., NCE, NHE, CHE, KHE) in mitochondrial bioenergetic function; roles of mitochondrial Ca2+ and reactive oxygen and nitrogen species in cardiac damage/protection in isolated mitochondria and intact hearts; and transport of substances via mitochondrial channels and exchangers in health and disease. Dr. Stowe greatly appreciates the education he has received at each of his institutions of learning, and he dedicates this book to all his prior mentors and colleagues, but especially to all the eager students he has mentored over the years in basic scientific discovery.
