Subdivision
| • | 201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry | [X] |
| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Rowena G. Matthews | | | Institution: | University of Michigan | | | Year Elected: | 2009 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1938 | | | | | | |
Rowena G. Matthews is the G. Robert Greenberg Distinguished University Professor of Biological Chemistry and a Research Professor and Charter Faculty Member, Life Sciences Institute at the University of Michigan. She is an internationally recognized authority on the role of folate- and B12-dependent enzymes in homocysteine metabolism and their relevance to disease. Her discoveries define the biochemical basis for establishing guidelines for folate levels in human nutrition. Matthews has also played a major role in the formulation of science policy both nationally and internationally. She was a member of an international advisory panel for the Advanced Study Institutes of NATO from 1994-96, served on the Council of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences from 1991-94, and participated in the activities of the Federal Science Policy Committee on Science of the House of Representatives. Additionally, she won the 2000 William A. Rose Award from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the 2001 Repligen Award, from the American Chemistry Society. She has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2002 and of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences since 2005. | |
| 2 | 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. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Robert Tjian | | | Institution: | University of California, Berkeley; Howard Hughes Medical Institute | | | Year Elected: | 2009 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1949 | | | | | | |
Robert Tjian served as president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in April 2009 through the end of 2016 and then returned to his lab at the University of California, Berkeley. Trained as a biochemist, he has made major contributions to the understanding of how genes work during three decades on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley. He was named an HHMI investigator in 1987.
Tjian studies the biochemical steps involved in controlling how genes are turned on and off, key steps in the process of decoding the human genome. He discovered proteins called transcription factors that bind to specific sections of DNA and play a critical role in controlling how genetic information is transcribed and translated into the thousands of biomolecules that keep cells, tissues, and organisms alive. Tjian's laboratory has illuminated the relationship between disruptions in the process of transcription and human diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and Huntington's. More recently, he has begun studying how transcription factors control the differentiation of embryonic stem cells into muscle, liver, and neurons.
Tjian, 59, was born in Hong Kong, the youngest of nine children. His family fled China before the Communist Revolution and eventually settled in New Jersey. Known as a voracious consumer of scientific information and data, Tjian famously talked his way into the biochemistry laboratory of the late Daniel Koshland as a Berkeley undergraduate—even though he had never taken a single course in the subject.
Tjian went on to receive a bachelor's degree in biochemistry from Berkeley in 1971 and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1976. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory with James Watson, he joined the Berkeley faculty in 1979. At Berkeley, Tjian assumed a variety of leadership roles, including spearheading a major campus initiative to support and implement new paradigms for bioscience teaching and research. He served as the Director of the Berkeley Stem Cell Center, and the Faculty Director of the Li Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has received many awards honoring his scientific contributions, including the Alfred P. Sloan Prize from the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University. He was named California Scientist of the Year in 1994.
As president of the Institute, Tjian remains an active scientist. His small laboratory group at HHMI's Janelia Farm Research Campus is focused on the development of new approaches to image biochemical activities in single living cells. He will also maintain a research laboratory at UC Berkeley, where he is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology.
Tjian and his wife, Claudia, an attorney, have two daughters. | |
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