Introduction
David Sanders is an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Purdue University. He grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey and then attended the Horace Mann School in Riverdale, NY. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from Yale College in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. He conducted his Ph.D. research in Biochemistry with Daniel E. Koshland, Jr., who was then editor of the journal Science, at the University of California at Berkeley. Sanders demonstrated that the response regulators in the two-component regulatory systems were phosphorylated on an aspartate residue and that they were protein phosphatases with a covalent intermediate.
Scientific career
He originated the idea of the "Molecule of the Year" feature in Science. He was a Visiting Scientist at the University of California at San Francisco, and then a postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, which is affiliated with MIT. It was there that he began his studies on the entry of viruses into cells with a focus on the inhibition of infection and applications to gene therapy.
He joined the Markey Center for Structural Biology at Purdue University in 1995, where he is the leader of the Molecular Virology programand also a member of the Cancer Center. He was the discoverer of a biochemical reaction, thiol-disulfide exchange, that leads to the entry of cancer-causing retroviruses into cells. He also is the primary inventor on two U.S. patents on novel gene-therapy delivery techniques.
His work on the Ebola virus led to his participation in the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Biological Weapons Proliferation Prevention Program, a product of the Nunn-Lugar legislation. His responsibilities included inspecting the Vector laboratory in Siberia, which was the site of biological-weapons development in the era of the Soviet Union. He has investigated the transmission of viruses from other animals, especially birds, to humans and has been invited to speak on ethics, biodefense, evolution, gene therapy, vaccination and influenza viruses in public forums including regular interviews on WIBC in Indianapolis,
He is a recipient of a National Science Foundation Career Award for his work on an enzyme that is involved in production of the greenhouse gas and potential energy source, methaneHe is also an American Cancer Society Research Scholar. In 2003 he conducted his sabbatical research at the Weizmann Institute in Israel.
Sanders has been a vocal critic of the Science article authored by Felisa Wolfe-Simon and Paul Davies in which the discovery of arsenic-based life is claimed. Sanders has argued that the original Science article on the arsenic bacteria should be retracted on the basis that the data in the paper were misrepresented in the article.
In his role with the Purdue University Senate, Sanders criticized the inconsistent application of the free speech policies by the Purdue University administration and President Mitch Daniels. A Purdue University Board of Trustee member responded with an attack on his Opinion piece.
Political career
Sanders was the Democrat candidate for Congress in the 4th District of Indiana in 2004 (lost to Steve Buyer) and 2006 (lost to Steve Buyer again). He was also elected by Democrats of the 4th Congressional District of Indiana to serve as a delegate pledged to Barack Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
On January 21, 2010, Dr. Sanders filed as a candidate for Indiana's 4th Congressional District followed by an appearance on CNN with the announcement of Steve Buyer's resignation. Sanders was defeated once again by Todd Rosita.
On November 3, 2015, David Sanders was elected as a City Councilor At-Large for West Lafayette. In a discussion about gerrymandering he referred to Indiana's 4th Congressional District as having been drawn so that it was "No Republican Left Behind."
He was featured in an interview in Science magazine in June 2010 and in the book "Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America" by Shawn Lawrence Otto. He has also written about the myth of the skills gap.