David A. Johnson
David A. Johnson, PhD is a native Tennessean and Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Quillen College of Medicine, East Tennessee State University, where he taught medical biochemistry for forty-four years. Southern Appalachia needed physicians and the medical school was also established to improve care at Mountain Home VA. He taught the first class on the first day in 1978 and continued until 2022. He also mentored PhD, MS, and undergraduate students. When the Gatton College of Pharmacy at ETSU was started he and colleagues volunteered to teach biochemistry. As an active researcher, his lab was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the American Heart Association, and the Health Effects Institute. With support from the Wellcome Trust, he spent three months in Cambridge in 1985 researching proteases and their inhibitors at Strangeway’s Laboratory on Wort’s Causeway. A subsequent two-month research sabbatical in the Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics in Oxford resulted in a molecular model of human mast cell tryptase. Early research by Johnson focused on purifying and characterizing proteinases and protease inhibitors from human tissues. This work led to the discovery of the amino acid sequence of the inhibitory site of human Alpha-1 Antitrypsin. Toward the end of his research career, he began expressing recombinant proteins in yeasts.
Dr Johnson is a lifelong Christian who has published over sixty scientific research papers, he holds BS and PhD degrees in chemistry from the University of Memphis. He spent five years at the University of Georgia in Athens, doing post-doctoral research and mentoring graduate students. Johnson and his wife live in Jonesborough, Tennessee, the first town established in Tennessee and the International Story Telling Center. As a member of Boones Creek Christian Church (founded 1825) since 1979 he served in several leadership positions. His YouTube channel is @DrJQuillen where you can see several videos
