Synopsis - Chlorophyll Biosynthesis and Technological Applications - page 36

Fig. 2.4 Fall 1959 Tino, far right , at UCD in Reid Brook's fruit morphology class in the
Department of Pomology, at UC Davis

assistant professorship at Purdue University. I stayed behind at UC Davis and in
the spring of 1960, joined the laboratory of a newly recruited assistant professor
by the name of Paul Castelfranco who was sharing the laboratory with Joe Key.
Paul had obtained his Ph.D. with Paul Stumph at UC Berkeley, and worked on
intermediary metabolism of the

oxidation of long chain fatty acids in peanut
cotyledons. He wanted me to solubilize the various membrane-bound enzymes
involved in the pathway.
Then in the fall of 1961, I met a new graduate student from Berkeley California,
Carole Conness, who Joined UCD to work on her Master Degree in the Botany
Department with Professor John Tucker. In the spring of 1962 we got engaged
(Fig. 2.4 ) and got married in August 1962 (Fig. 2.5 ).
After 2 years of work trying to solubilize the

α

α

oxidation enzymes, very little
progress was achieved. Then I made an observation, when Paul was on sabbatical
in Milan Italy, in the laboratory of Giorgio Forti that led to the discovery of the
extra-mitochondrial β oxidation pathway. After about a year and a half of clean
ups, my Ph.D. thesis was defended successfully and was published in three parts in
Plant Physiology (Rebeiz and Castelfranco 1964 ; Rebeiz et al. 1965a , b ).

2.4 From UC Davis Back to Beirut Lebanon

Nineteen sixty four was a very good year for us at UC Davis. Carole obtained her MS
degree in Botany and I successfully defended my Ph.D. thesis after having spent
4 wonderful years in Paul Castelfranco's Laboratory, where years of open scientific
and philosophical discussions, in English and French with Paul, had shaped my