Thomas G. Spiro | Department of Chemistry

Affiliate Professor

Contact Information

spirot@uw.edu

206-685-4964

BAG 219

Personal Website

Fields of Interest

Bioinorganic Chemistry Spectroscopy Biomineralization Environmental Chemistry

Biography

Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1960

B.S., University of California, Los Angeles, 1956

Thomas Spiro moved his laboratory to University of Washington in 2007 after a long career on the faculty of Princeton University, where he was chair of the Chemistry Department. The role of metal ions in biology has been the principal theme of his research. His laboratory pioneered the application of laser resonance Raman spectroscopy, including time-resolved techniques, to the structure and reactivity of metalloproteins, and to the mechanisms of protein folding and allostery. At Princeton, he developed courses in environmental chemistry, and co-authored a text-book, Chemistry of the Environment.

Research

Selected Research

Soldatova, A. V.; Spiro, T. G., Alternative modes of O2 activation in P450 and NOS enzymes are clarified by DFT modeling and resonance Raman spectroscopy. Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry 2020, 207, 111054. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jinorgbio.2020.111054
Balakrishnan, G.; Soldatova, A. V.; Reid, P. J.; Spiro, T. G. Ultrafast charge transfer in nickel phthalocyanine probed by femtosecond Raman-Induced Kerr Effect Spectroscopy. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2014, 136 (24), 8746–8754. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ja503541v
Spiro, T. G.; Purvis-Roberts, K. L.; Stigliani, W. M., Chemistry of the environment. 3rd ed.; University Science Books: Mill Valley, California, 2012.
Butterfield, C. N.; Soldatova, A. V.; Lee, S.-W.; Spiro, T. G.; Tebo, B. M., Mn(II,III) oxidation and MnO₂ mineralization by an expressed bacterial multicopper oxidase. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2013, 110 (29), 11731-11735.DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1303677110
Vaughn, M. B.; Zhang, J.; Spiro, T. G.; Dyer, R. B.; Klinman, J. P., Activity-related microsecond dynamics revealed by temperature-jump Förster resonance energy transfer measurements on thermophilic alcohol dehydrogenase. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2018, 140 (3), 900–903. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.7b12369
Soldatova, A. V.; Balakrishnan, G.; Oyerinde, O. F.; Romano, C. A.; Tebo, B. M. Spiro, T. G., Biogenic and synthetic MnO2 nanoparticles: size and growth probed with absorption and Raman spectroscopies and dynamic light scattering. Environmental Science & Technology 2019, 53 (8), 4185-4197. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.8b05806

Affiliations

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