Bio

DUANE C. YOCH, Ph.D. is an Emeritus Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC. He received his BS and MS degrees in Bacteriology from the South Dakota State University in 1963 and 1965, and his Ph.D. degree from the The Pennsylvania State University in 1968. He received post-doctoral training with Danial I. Arnon at the University of California, Berkeley, CA (1968-1972). He worked as a Research Specialist in the Agricultural Experiment Station on the Berkeley campus in the Department of Cell Physiology (1972-1978) where he discovered proteins in aerobic bacteria that were capable of carrying high energy electrons in the oxidizing environment in which these bacteria lived. At the University of South Carolina he and his graduate students co-discovered (with others) how photosynthetic bacteria regulate the key enzyme that allows them to convert nitrogen in the atmosphere into ammonia which is used for cell growth. In the latter part of his career at SC he and his students isolated bacteria and discovered the enzyme that is responsible for releasing dimethyl sulfide (DMS) into the environment

Publications

Yoch, D.C. and Carithers, R. P.. 1979. Bacteria Iron-Sulfer Proteins. Microbiological Reviews . 43:384-421.

Gotto, J. W. and Yoch, D. C.. . Regulation fo Rhodospirillum rubrum Nitrogenase Activity. The Journal of Biological Chemistry. 257:2868-2873.

Yoch, D. C.. 2002. Dimethylsulfoniopropionate: Its Sources, Role in the Marine Food Web, and Biological Degradation to Dimethylsulfide. . Applied and Environmental Microbiology. 68:5804-5815.