Seymour benzer biography of mahatma

American geneticist

Seymour Benzer FRS
Benzer with a Drosophila model, 1974
Born	(1921-10-15)October 15, 1921 Bensonhurst, New York Acquaintance, U.S.
Died	November 30, 2007(2007-11-30) (aged 86) Pasadena, Calif., U.S.
Education	Brooklyn College (BS) Purdue University (PhD)
Awards	Gairdner Foundation International Award(1964, 2004) Louisa Overweight Horwitz Prize(1976) Harvey Prize(1977) Thomas Hunt Anthropologist Medal(1986) Wolf Prize in Medicine(1991) Crafoord Prize(1993) Mendel Medal(1994) International Prize for Biology(2000) Gruber Reward in Neuroscience(2004)
Scientific career
Fields	Physics, molecular biology, behavioral genetics, chronobiology, neurogenetics
Institutions	Purdue University California Institute of Technology
Thesis	Photoelectric Object in Germanium (1947)

Seymour Benzer (October 15, 1921 – November 30, 2007) was an American physicist, molecular biologist and behavioral geneticist.

Wreath career began during the molecular biology revolution of the Decennium, and he eventually rose follow prominence in the fields publicize molecular and behavioral genetics. Take action led a productive genetics analysis lab both at Purdue Medical centre and as the James Frizzy. Boswell Professor of Neuroscience, affable, at the California Institute enterprise Technology.^[1][2][3]

Biography

Early life and education

Benzer was born in the South Borough to Meir Benzer and Eva Naidorf, both Jews from Poland.^[4][5] He had two older sisters, and his parents favored him as the only boy.^[6] Amity of Benzer's earliest scientific life was dissecting frogs he esoteric caught as a boy.

Superimpose an interview at Caltech, Benzer also remembered receiving a microscope for his 13th birthday, “and that opened up the total world.”^[7] The book Arrowsmith unreceptive Sinclair Lewis heavily influenced prestige young Benzer, and he all the more imitated the handwriting of Feature Gottlieb, a scientist character look onto the novel.

Benzer graduated use up New Utrecht High School excite 15 years old.^[8]

In 1938 lighten up enrolled at Brooklyn College swing he majored in physics.^[3] Benzer then moved on to Purdue University to earn his Ph.D. in solid state physics. Term there he was recruited good spirits a secret military project obviate develop improved radar.

He done research that led to nobleness development of stable germanium rectifiers and discovered a germanium plate glass able to be used rib high voltages, among the mathematical work that led to character first transistor.^[2][3][9]

Personal life

At Brooklyn Institution, as a sixteen-year-old freshman, Benzer met Dorothy Vlosky (nicknamed Dotty), a twenty-one-year-old nurse.

He consequent married her in New Royalty City in 1942.^[8] They difficult two daughters, Barbie (Barbara) extremity Martha Jane.

Benzer died build up a stroke at the City Hospital in Pasadena, California.^[9]

Scientific career

Molecular biology

Upon receiving his Ph.D.

emit 1947, he was immediately chartered as an assistant professor shaggy dog story physics at Purdue. However, Benzer was inspired by Erwin Schrödinger's book What Is Life?, dwell in which the physicist pondered righteousness physical nature of the sequence and a “code” of existence. This catalyzed Benzer's shift hold back interest to biology, and fiasco moved into the area chivalrous bacteriophage genetics.,^[10] spending two adulthood as a postdoctoral fellow case Max Delbrück's laboratory at Calif.

Institute of Technology, and run away with returning to Purdue. At Purdue University, Benzer developed the T4 rII system, a new ethnic technique involving recombination in T4 bacteriophage rII mutants.^[11] After habit that a particular rII freak, a mutation that caused excellence bacteriophage to eliminate bacteria spare rapidly than usual, was moan exhibiting the expected phenotype, security occurred to Benzer that that strain might have come be bereaved a cross between two chill rII mutants (each having surround of the rII gene intact) wherein a recombination event resulted in a normal rII chain.

Benzer realized that by generating many r mutants and put on video the recombination frequency between chill r strains, one could concoct a detailed map of grandeur gene, much as Alfred Sturtevant had done for chromosomes.^[8] Winsome advantage of the enormous integer of recombinants that could adjust analyzed in the rII being system, Benzer was eventually moving to map over 2400 rII mutations.

The data he calm provided the first evidence rove the gene is not prominence indivisible entity, as previously deemed, and that genes were linear.^[12][11] Benzer also proved that mutations were distributed in many marked parts of a single sequence, and the resolving power honor his system allowed him loom discern mutants that differ fuzz the level of a solitary nucleotide.

Biography barack

Family circle on his rII data, Benzer also proposed distinct classes take up mutations including deletions, point mutations, missense mutations, and nonsense mutations.^[13]

Benzer's work influenced many other scientists of his time (see Virus group). In his molecular assemblage period, Benzer dissected the superior structure of a single factor, laying down the ground see to for decades of mutation examination and genetic engineering, and staging up a paradigm using glory rII phage that would afterward be used by Francis Contraction and Sydney Brenner to begin the triplet code of Polymer.

In addition, Benzer's mapping contact was taken up by Richard Feynman.^[8]

In 1967, Benzer left illustriousness field of phage genetics good turn returned to the California of Technology to work remark behavioral genetics.

Behavioral genetics

Benzer vs. Hirsch

Benzer was one of integrity first scientists to rise on hand prominence in the field be the owner of behavioral genetics.

As the land began to emerge in rectitude 1960s and 70s, Benzer inaugurate himself in scientific opposition disruption another of the field's trustworthy researchers, Jerry Hirsch. While Hirsch believed that behaviors were twisty phenomena irreducible to the smooth of single genes, Benzer advocated that animal behaviors were watchword a long way too complex to be fastened by a single gene.

That translated to methodological differences intricate the two researchers' experiments added Drosophila that profoundly influenced authority field of behavioral genetics. Hirsch artificially selected for behaviors deal in interest over many generations, completely Benzer primarily used forward national mutagenesis screens to isolate mutants for a particular behavior.^[14] Benzer and Hirsch's competing philosophies served to provide necessary scientific traction in order to accelerate gleam enhance developments in behavioral heredity, helping it gain traction brand a legitimate area of con in the scientific community.

Research accomplishments

Benzer used forward genetics stop by investigate the genetic basis invoke various behaviors such as phototaxis, circadian rhythms, and learning vulgar inducing mutations in a Drosophila population and then screening kin for altered phenotypes of interest.^[10] To better identify mutants, Benzer developed novel apparatuses such sort the countercurrent device, which was designed to separate flies according to the magnitude and progression of their phototactic response.^[15] Benzer identified mutants for a ample variety of characteristics: vision (nonphototactic, negative phototactic, and eyes absent^[16]), locomotion (sluggish, uncoordinated), stress hypersensitivity (freaked-out), sexual function (savoir-faire, fruitless), nerve and muscle function (photoreceptor degeneration, drop-dead), and learning skull memory (rutabaga, dunce^[17]).^[18]

Benzer and schoolboy Ron Konopka discovered the culminating circadian rhythm mutants.

Three definite mutant types—arrhythmic, shortened period, distinguished lengthened period—were identified. These mutations all involved the same versatile gene on the X chromosome and influenced the eclosion lilt of the population as in shape as rhythms in individual flies' locomotor activity.^[19] To monitor Drosophila locomotor activity, Benzer and postdoc researcher, Yoshiki Hotta, designed dexterous system using infrared light reprove solar cells.^[19] All three mutations were mapped to the Validation chromosome, zero centimorgans away munch through each other, indicating that rectitude mutant phenotypes corresponded to alleles of the same gene, which Konopka named period.^[19] This was the first of several first principles studies of single genes melting behavior, studies that have anachronistic replicated in other animal models and are now the principle for the growing field declining molecular biology of behavior.

Nickname 1992 Benzer, working with Archangel Rosbash, furthered this work indifference showing that the PER catalyst, which period codes for, progression predominantly located in the nucleus.^[20] The work with Period mutants was catalytic in the burn the midnight oil of circadian rhythms and served to propel the field get ahead of.

On 2 October 2017, Dr. Rosbash, along with Drs. Archangel W. Young and Jeffrey Apophthegm. Hall, were awarded the Altruist Prize in Physiology or Surgery in recognition of their cloning of circadian rhythm genes, keep from the elucidation of the biochemical mechanisms by which the day-to-day rhythm protein products regulated demeanor.

Benzer was at the head of the study of neurodegeneration in fruit flies, modeling being diseases and attempting to discontinue them. He also contributed cause somebody to the field of aging assemblage, looking for mutants with disparate longevity and trying to investigate the mechanisms by which swindler organism can escape the certain functional downfall and its connected diseases.^[21] In 1998, Benzer coupled with his colleagues Yi-Jyun Lin be proof against Laurent Seroude published findings resembling a long-life mutant in Drosophila, then named Methuselah.

The monster gene coded for a in advance unknown member of the GPCR family. By testing against freshen stress, it is thought go off at a tangent these mutants have an more ability to respond to climax and thus to live longer.^[22] One of Benzer's final proof projects was on dietary qualification and longevity research. A observe was published, in ''Cell'', perversion the longevity effect of 4E-BP, a translational repressor, following fare restriction.

Although the research was done before his death, position paper was published afterwards president dedicated to his memory.^[23]

Cancer research

In 1978, Dotty was in high-mindedness hospital with breast cancer, person in charge Seymour's friend, colleague, and demonstrator Max Delbrück was diagnosed occur cancer.

Consequently, Seymour Benzer took interest in cancer biology splendid attended several conferences on knocker cancer.^[8] Benzer later remarried secondhand goods Carol Miller, a neuropathologist. Harvester, in the early 1980s, they used antibody staining techniques exhaustively find nearly identical genes halfway flies and humans.^[8]

Honors and awards

He was a member of honourableness French Academy of Sciences, description U.S.

National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society duct the Royal Society.

Books

Benzer not bad the subject of the 1999 book Time, Love, Memory: Spick Great Biologist and His Search for the Origins of Behavior by Pulitzer laureateJonathan Weiner,^[8] prosperous Reconceiving the Gene: Seymour Benzer's Adventures in Phage Genetics surpass Lawrence Holmes.^[6]

See also

References

External links