Biophysical Society Bulletin | February 2021

Biophysicist in Profile

Frances Separovic Areas of Research Biological solid-state NMR and membrane- active peptides

Institution University of Melbourne and Bio21 Molecular Science & Biotechnology Institute

At-a-Glance

Frances Separovic incoming President of the Biophysical Society, followed an atypical path to be- come a biophysical chemist. “I did not choose a career in science; I stumbled onto it,” she shares. “Almost all of us will struggle no matter what career we choose, so may as well have some fun along the way. My career in biophysics has not been easy, but I have enjoyed the journey. I am so pleased to have embarked upon a career in biophysics and being a member of the Biophysical Society helped me along the way.”

Frances Separovic

When Frances Separovic was a young child, her family immi- grated from Croatia to Broken Hill, an outback mining town in central Australia — you may have seen it featured in the movies The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert and Mad Max . Her father was a miner and her mother cleaned houses to make ends meet. Separovic was the first in her family to complete primary school and never envisioned herself pur- suing a career in science. “My family did not think in terms of careers —we thought in terms of making a living. I thought that if I were lucky, I could become an air hostess and get to fly and see other parts of Australia,” she shares. “However, this was very unlikely as there was a height requirement, which I was unlikely to reach as I was always the smallest kid in my class at school.” After high school, she started at the University of Sydney, but left school after one term, working as a junior technical assistant in a microbiology lab at CSIRO Food Research, a government research organization. Following the birth of her son, she was working full-time and struggling to make ends meet, so she decided to return to school part-time so that she could qualify as a technical officer. After getting a biological technician’s certificate in night school, and finding that she enjoyed physics and math, she undertook a math-physics double major at Macquarie University. Her degree program, which she pursued part-time, complemented her work at CSIRO, particularly when she switched to a physics lab. Separovic found that she enjoyed science so much that she chose to work on her PhD at the University of New South Wales. “Although it was difficult working full-time and study- ing part-time, it was both rewarding and stimulating and enriched my life in so many ways,” she says. By the time she finished her PhD, her son had graduated from high school. She was awarded a Fogarty Fellowship and carried out a postdoc with Klaus Gawrisch at NIH.

Following her postdoc, she returned to Australia and joined the University of Melbourne as an associate professor of chemistry. “I found it difficult to transfer from a government laboratory, where I had worked for 23 years, to a university environment. It was compounded by being a physicist in a chemistry department and having to establish myself as a teaching and research academic,” she explains. “Also, I was considered too old to be an early career researcher and found that my age often impeded me at most stages of my career, more so for women than men.” In 2005, she became the first woman professor of chemistry at the university, and in 2010 the first woman to head the School of Chemistry. “Increasingly our lab has focused on membrane-active peptides, in particular antimicrobial peptides, that cross lipid bilayer membranes. Membrane-active peptides have been thought of as a means to defeat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Alternatives to conventional antibiotics are heavily needed and could be derived from membrane-active peptides and understanding how to harness synergistic combinations of peptides and drugs,” Separovic explains. “During my PhD work, I started studying the peptide antibiotic gramicidin A by using solid-state NMR to determine its structure in a lipid bilayer. I loved NMR as it was a way of doing quantum mechanics every day. I went on to determine the structure of other peptides in membranes, and increasingly antimicrobial peptides.” Separovic retired from the University of Melbourne in 2019 and holds the title Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor Emeritus. She is also deputy director of the Bio21 Molecular Science & Biotechnology Institute and an honorary professor of chemistry at the university. “Current projects are entitled, Integrating Quantum Hyperpolarisation in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Systems and Mechanism of Bacterial Resistance to Antimicrobial Peptides,” she shares. “We were awarded an

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