A Great Scientist has Passed Away...

[Fragilityh14]

Due to the unique and wonderful influence that Dr. Ryan has had on my life, in his passing I feel it necessary to make his work a little bit more well known, so it can be appreciated. However, I also want to couple his amazing scientific discoveries with an explanation that Dr. Clarence "Bud" Ryan was full of life till his last days, down to earth, extremely kind, and a rare sort of genius whose advances in biochemistry the world of science will never forget.

My dad worked for Dr. Ryan when getting his Master's Degree in Biochemistry in 1976, and didn't stop working for Dr. Ryan for the rest of Dr. Ryan's life, and will continue to finish up the loose ends on research after Dr. Ryan's death.

Here is an article in USA Today from 1993. My dad (Greg Pearce) is standing with Dr. Ryan in the picture which was in the magazine and is not on this website.

"Plants that fight back.
From: USA Today (Magazine)  |  Date: 6/1/1993

Nothing may seem like easier prey for a hungry insect than a succulent plant, which can't pull up its roots and run away or cry out for help. However, plants can and do fight back by synthesizeing toxins that poison attacking insects, repellents that make predators flee, powerful steroid-like hormones that interfere with metamorphosis from larva to pupa to adult, and other chemical weapons.
Biochemist Clarence Ryan and co-workers at Washington State University have isolated, identified, and synthesized the chemical that triggers a plant defense mechanism. The compound discourages predatory insects by giving them a bad case of indigestion.
The discovery caps a 20-year effort by Ryan and other biochemists to identify the signaling agent plants produce when stressed (wounded) by munching insects. The compound, systemin, activates or turns on genes that produce two proteinase inhibitors.
Proteinases are enzymes that animals - insects in this instance - use to digest proteins. The proteinase inhibitors created by systemin's signal interfere with the bugs' digestion of proteins in plant tissue. This gives them a strong incentive to seek nourishment elsewhere and may save a plant from defoliation and death.
The research on systemin could lead to better biological control methods for insects, such as a systemin-based compound that stimulates the defensive mechanisms of plants. Systemin research also has broader implications for the study of the biochemical compounds produced by plants.
Some plants produce defensive chemicals continually, whether or not they are under attack. Many others utilize so-called "inducible" defenses - toxic compounds that are synthesized only in response to a predator's attack. Scientists have known for years that plants such as tomatoes issue "signaling molecules" when attacked by chewing insects. The molecules turn on genes that instruct the plant to begin making proteinase inhibitors. The inhibitors then accumulate in leaves and are consumed by insects.
Ryan's group focused on simpler compounds such as auxins, cytokinins, and bioactive carbohydrates during much of their two-decade effort to identify the compound that activates the proteinase defenses in plants. The search for the molecule proved elusive until, in the late 1980s, they decided to change their focus and look for other potential molecular signals. They systematically searched tomato leaf extracts for a molecule capable of activating the proteinase inhibitor genes. Eventually, Ryan and technicians Gregory Pearce and Scott Johnson identified and one-half years and leaves from more than 30,000 young tomato plants to isolate just one microgram of the polypeptide. That one-millionth of a gram represents all the polypeptide present in 60 pounds of tomato leaves. Researchers were able to use the minute quantity to determine systemin's structure - which consists of 18 amino acids - so that it could be synthesized in larger quantities."



here is a press release from Washington State University

"First NAS member
Bud Ryan dies
of brain aneurysm
Monday, Oct. 8, 2007

WSU Today and WSU News Service

Clarence A. "Bud" Ryan, a pioneer researcher in plant biochemistry and the first WSU faculty member to be admitted to the National Academy of Sciences, died Sunday at age 76. The cause of death is believed to be a brain aneurysm.

Survivors include his wife, Pat Ryan, who works at the WSU CougarCard Center, and two daughters, Janis and Jamie. 

Services are planned for Saturday; details will be announced.

For an in-depth WSU Today article about Ryan, click on the following link. 

To share comments and remembrances of Ryan, click on the Obituaries link in the left-hand navigation bar, then follow the instructions at the top of that page.

Ryan, whose career at WSU spanned more than 40 years, is internationally known for his discoveries that plants produce natural insecticides to protect themselves from predation by herbivores.

"Dr. Ryan will truly be remembered as one of the outstanding scientists and faculty members in our university's history.  This is a great loss to everyone who knew him, who worked with him and who continued to learn from him," said WSU President Elson S. Floyd.

Ryan pioneered the study of what has come to be known as the "innate immune response" of plants. A protein chemist by trade, in the early 1970s he began trying to understand how plant protease inhibitors work. Those are natural insecticides, made by plants, that prevent insects and microorganisms from digesting plant material.

Prior to his work, plants were assumed to contain the inhibitors all the time, as a deterrent to being eaten. Ryan discovered instead that plants make the inhibitors in response to an attack. He further showed that an attack on one part of a plant sets off chemical signals that spur production of inhibitors throughout the entire plant.

"That was a huge discovery, because nobody had ever seen anything like that," Ryan recalled in 2005. The breakthrough opened a whole new field of research in plant defenses and secured Ryan's election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1986.

He and his students and co-workers went on to discover the first polypeptide hormone found in plants. The hormone, named systemin, amplifies the plant's original response to an attack and signals undamaged leaves to produce protease inhibitors. In that way, the plant defends itself against further attack, in case the insect or microbe that inflicted the initial injury was just the first of many.

Ryan retired from WSU in 1999 but has maintained an active research program since then. He had published more than 250 papers and articles and had at least two more in press at the time of his death.

In 2005, the WSU Board of Regents voted Ryan an honorary doctorate degree. The university had not awarded an honorary doctorate since 1995 and has awarded only four such degrees in the last half-century.

In recommending the degree for Ryan, then-WSU President V. Lane Rawlins said, "Bud has made such an impact on the world and is so much a part of the fabric of WSU that this honor seems especially appropriate.  It is awarded only to those whose work is truly significant in a global environment."

In a WSU Today article about the honor, Ryan said, "When I first came here, people wondered 'Why there?' Now, they think you're lucky to be coming here."

The rising reputation of WSU's work in plant sciences was due in no small part to Ryan's efforts.

Born Sept. 29, 1931, in Butte, Mont., Ryan earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Carroll College in Helena and a master's and doctoral degree in chemistry from Montana State University. He came to WSU in 1964 as an assistant agricultural chemist and assistant professor of biochemistry.

In 1981 and 1982, he took a sabbatical to learn more about molecular biology at the University of Washington and Harvard University. He then returned to WSU to continue and expand his research.

Throughout his career, he received a long list of honors and awards from professional organizations and from WSU. Several of his research articles have been ranked among the most-cited in their discipline.

Ryan served as chair of the Department of Agricultural Chemistry from 1977 to 1980, as acting director of WSU's Institute for Biological Chemistry from 1989-90, and was named the Charlotte Y. Martin Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Plant Physiology in 1991.

Funeral arrangements are being handled by Kimball Funeral Home in Pullman."





I don't know if anyone here is interested in science, but even to a layperson the USA today article makes it pretty clear how significant it was. It's possible to find the actual articles about it online but they are very hard to understand.


I guess everytime someone you've known since you were born dies it is the longest you've ever known anyone who has died.

[d_goddard]

You're older than you've even been
and now you're even older
and now you're even older
.... and now you're older still.

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