| 1 | Name: | Dr. Craig C. Mello | |
| Institution: | University of Massachusetts Medical School; Howard Hughes Medical Institute | ||
| Year Elected: | 2009 | ||
| Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1960 | ||
Craig C. Mello is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Blais University Chair in Molecular Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Dr. Mello and his colleague Andrew Fire, Ph.D., of Stanford University, received the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of RNA interference (RNAi), a natural gene silencing mechanism triggered by double-stranded RNA. RNAi provides both a powerful research tool for knocking out the expression of specific genes and opens a totally unanticipated window on gene regulation. Dr. Mello holds a B.S. in biochemistry from Brown University and a Ph.D. in cellular and developmental biology from Harvard University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center before joining University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1994. | |||