A Pathfinder in High-Pressure Bioscience: In Memoriam of Gaston Hui Bon Hoa

Gaston’s research on the effects of hydrostatic pressure on substrate binding, equilibria of heme iron ligation, and the protein–protein interactions of cytochromes P450 [4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13] has become a part of the golden fund of cytochrome P450 science and has served as a prototype for pressure perturbation studies in other laboratories. Besides being a prominent scientist, Gaston was distinguished by his remarkable engineering skills. Since the experimental equipment that he needed for his innovative studies had not yet been (and remains not to be) commercially available, he designed and built research instruments by himself. A giant in microbiology and biochemistry, he was a close friend with Marianne Grunberg-Manago and Pierre Douzou at the Institute de Biologie Physico Chimique (IBPC). [...]when I was a tenured professor, I sought Gunny’s advice as to where to spend a sabbatical year—and his suggestion was Paris, IPBC, and Pierre’s laboratory. Several pioneering papers ensued, showing that osmotic pressure indeed removed bridging hydrogen bonding water between protein and the outer base pairs that could be reversed by