Rosbash on Fruit Flies and Fleeing Nazi Germany
Michael Rosbash, PhD, 73, is an American geneticist, a professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, and as of October 2, a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Dr Rosbash (along with co-recipients Jeffrey Hall and Michael Young) was instrumental in revealing the molecular basis of circadian rhythms. Using the fruit fly, Drosophila, he identified genes and proteins involved in regulating the clock. Drs Rosbash and Hall proposed a mechanism by which a molecular 24-hour clock might work: a transcriptional negative-feedback loop. Their model still holds up, despite discoveries of additional circadian rhythm genes. In essence, the genes that are part of this loop activate the production of key proteins until a critical activity of each accumulates and turns off transcription.
In addition to his most recent accolade, Dr Rosbash is a recipient of the 2013 Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine, the 2013 Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences, the 2012 Canada Gairdner International Award, the 2012 Massry Prize, the 2011 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize for Biology or Biochemistry, and the 2009 Neuroscience Prize of the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation.
Dr Rosbash spoke with physician and journalist Marc Gozlan, MD, for Medscape./.../
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