Gerald M. Rubin

Last updated
Gerald Rubin
Born
Gerald Mayer Rubin

1950 (age 7273)[ citation needed ]
Alma mater
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Thesis Studies on 5.8S ribosomal RNA  (1974)
Doctoral advisor Sydney Brenner
Website www.hhmi.org/scientists/gerald-m-rubin

Gerald Mayer Rubin (born 1950) is an American biologist, notable for pioneering the use of transposable P elements in genetics, and for leading the public project to sequence the Drosophila melanogaster genome. Related to his genomics work, Rubin's lab is notable for development of genetic and genomics tools and studies of signal transduction and gene regulation. Rubin also serves as a vice president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and executive director of the Janelia Research Campus. [2] [3] [4] [5]

Contents

Education and early life

Rubin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1950, attending the Boston Latin School. Rubin completed his undergraduate degree in biology at MIT, working at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory during the summer. [6] [7] He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge, [8] working at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in 1974, [9] for studies on 5.8S ribosomal RNA supervised by Sydney Brenner. [8]

Career and research

Following his PhD, Rubin did postdoctoral research at Stanford University with David Hogness. [10]

Rubin's first faculty position was at Harvard Medical School, followed by the Carnegie Institution of Washington; in 1983 he accepted an appointment as the John D. MacArthur Professor of Genetics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was appointed a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator in 1987. He is currently the MacArthur Professor of Genetics emeritus, Genomics and Development, in Berkeley's Department of Molecular and Cell Biology.

Rubin has taken a leading role in a number of high-profile scientific research projects. [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [ excessive citations ] As the director of the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project, he led the public effort to sequence Drosophila melanogaster . [17] As Vice President of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Rubin led the development of HHMI's Janelia Research Campus, an independent biomedical research institute in Virginia. [6]

His lab is particularly known for its development of genomics tools, studies of gene regulation, and other genome-wide research.

He was one of the three scientific founders of Exelixis in 1994; the company's original business plan was to exploit genomic research in Drosophila and other model organism to discover biological targets that could be used in drug discovery. [22]

Awards and honours

Rubin has won numerous awards including:

Related Research Articles

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A transposable element is a nucleic acid sequence in DNA that can change its position within a genome, sometimes creating or reversing mutations and altering the cell's genetic identity and genome size. Transposition often results in duplication of the same genetic material. In the human genome, L1 and Alu elements are two examples. Barbara McClintock's discovery of them earned her a Nobel Prize in 1983. Its importance in personalized medicine is becoming increasingly relevant, as well as gaining more attention in data analytics given the difficulty of analysis in very high dimensional spaces.

<i>Drosophila melanogaster</i> Species of fruit fly

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Allan C. Spradling is an American scientist and principal investigator at the Carnegie Institution for Science and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute who studies egg development in the model organism, Drosophila melanogaster, a fruit fly. He is considered a leading researcher in the developmental genetics of the fruit fly egg and has developed a number of techniques in his career that have led to greater understanding of fruit fly genetics including contributions to sequencing its genome. He is also an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University and at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

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References

  1. 1 2 Orr-Weaver, T. (2003). "The 2003 George W. Beadle Medal; Gerald M. Rubin and Allan C. Spradling". Genetics. 164 (4): 1248–1249. doi:10.1093/genetics/164.4.1248. PMC   1462668 . PMID   15106662.
  2. Gerald M. Rubin's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  3. Rubin, G. M. (2006). "Janelia Farm: An Experiment in Scientific Culture". Cell. 125 (2): 209–212. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2006.04.005 . PMID   16630805.
  4. "Faculty Research Page". Department of Molecular & Cell Biology.
  5. http://www.sciencewatch.com/sept-oct99/sw_sept-oct99_page3.htm HMI's Gerald M. Rubin: The Benefits of Genomics, ScienceWatch, v.10, n.5 (Sept./Oct. 1999)
  6. 1 2 UPI, "Gerald Rubin: Science Far Too Conservative", April 20, 2006 (discussing Janelia Farm).
  7. "Gerald M. Rubin". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 6 June 2022.
  8. 1 2 Rubin, Gerald Mayer (1974). Studies on 5.8 S Ribosomal RNA (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. OCLC   500553465. EThOS   uk.bl.ethos.471132.
  9. Rubin, G. (1974). "Three forms of the 5.8-S ribosomal RNA species in Saccharomyces cerevisiae". European Journal of Biochemistry. 41 (1): 197–202. doi: 10.1111/j.1432-1033.1974.tb03260.x . PMID   4593336.
  10. Rubin, G.; Hogness, D. (1975). "Effect of heat shock on the synthesis of low molecular weight RNAs in drosophila: Accumulation of a novel form of 5S RNA". Cell. 6 (2): 207–213. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(75)90011-2. PMID   810246. S2CID   42281700.
  11. Mammalian Gene Collection Program Team; Strausberg, R. L.; Feingold, E. A.; Grouse, L. H.; et al. (2002). "Generation and initial analysis of more than 15,000 full-length human and mouse cDNA sequences". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 99 (26): 16899–16903. Bibcode:2002PNAS...9916899M. doi: 10.1073/pnas.242603899 . PMC   139241 . PMID   12477932.
  12. Xu, T; Rubin, G. M. (1993). "Analysis of genetic mosaics in developing and adult Drosophila tissues". Development. 117 (4): 1223–37. doi:10.1242/dev.117.4.1223. PMID   8404527.
  13. Harris, M. A.; Clark, J; Ireland, A; Lomax, J; Ashburner, M; Foulger, R; Eilbeck, K; Lewis, S; Marshall, B; Mungall, C; Richter, J; Rubin, G. M.; Blake, J. A.; Bult, C; Dolan, M; Drabkin, H; Eppig, J. T.; Hill, D. P.; Ni, L; Ringwald, M; Balakrishnan, R; Cherry, J. M.; Christie, K. R.; Costanzo, M. C.; Dwight, S. S.; Engel, S; Fisk, D. G.; Hirschman, J. E.; Hong, E. L.; et al. (2004). "The Gene Ontology (GO) database and informatics resource". Nucleic Acids Research. 32 (Database issue): D258–61. doi:10.1093/nar/gkh036. PMC   308770 . PMID   14681407.
  14. Spradling, A.; Rubin, G. (1982). "Transposition of cloned P elements into Drosophila germ line chromosomes". Science. 218 (4570): 341–347. Bibcode:1982Sci...218..341S. doi:10.1126/science.6289435. PMID   6289435.
  15. Rubin, G.; Spradling, A. (1982). "Genetic transformation of Drosophila with transposable element vectors". Science. 218 (4570): 348–353. Bibcode:1982Sci...218..348R. doi:10.1126/science.6289436. PMID   6289436.
  16. Miklos, G.; Rubin, G. (1996). "The role of the genome project in determining gene function: Insights from model organisms". Cell. 86 (4): 521–529. doi: 10.1016/S0092-8674(00)80126-9 . PMID   8752207. S2CID   10526337.
  17. 1 2 Adams, M.; Celniker, S.; Holt, R.; Evans, C.; Gocayne, J.; Amanatides, P.; Scherer, S.; Li, P.; Hoskins, R.; Galle, R. F.; George, R. A.; Lewis, S. E.; Richards, S.; Ashburner, M.; Henderson, S. N.; Sutton, G. G.; Wortman, J. R.; Yandell, M. D.; Zhang, Q.; Chen, L. X.; Brandon, R. C.; Rogers, Y. H.; Blazej, R. G.; Champe, M.; Pfeiffer, B. D.; Wan, K. H.; Doyle, C.; Baxter, E. G.; Helt, G.; et al. (2000). "The genome sequence of Drosophila melanogaster". Science. 287 (5461): 2185–2195. Bibcode:2000Sci...287.2185.. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.549.8639 . doi:10.1126/science.287.5461.2185. PMID   10731132.
  18. Rubin, G.; Yandell, M.; Wortman, J.; Gabor Miklos, G.; Nelson, C.; Hariharan, I.; Fortini, M.; Li, P.; Apweiler, R.; Fleischmann, W.; Cherry, J. M.; Henikoff, S.; Skupski, M. P.; Misra, S.; Ashburner, M.; Birney, E.; Boguski, M. S.; Brody, T.; Brokstein, P.; Celniker, S. E.; Chervitz, S. A.; Coates, D.; Cravchik, A.; Gabrielian, A.; Galle, R. F.; Gelbart, W. M.; George, R. A.; Goldstein, L. S.; Gong, F.; Guan, P. (2000). "Comparative genomics of the eukaryotes". Science. 287 (5461): 2204–2215. Bibcode:2000Sci...287.2204.. doi:10.1126/science.287.5461.2204. PMC   2754258 . PMID   10731134.
  19. Botstein, D.; Cherry, J. M.; Ashburner, M.; Ball, C. A.; Blake, J. A.; Butler, H.; Davis, A. P.; Dolinski, K.; Dwight, S. S.; Eppig, J. T.; Harris, M. A.; Hill, D. P.; Issel-Tarver, L.; Kasarskis, A.; Lewis, S.; Matese, J. C.; Richardson, J. E.; Ringwald, M.; Rubin, G. M.; Sherlock, G. (2000). "Gene ontology: Tool for the unification of biology. The Gene Ontology Consortium". Nature Genetics . 25 (1): 25–29. doi:10.1038/75556. PMC   3037419 . PMID   10802651. Open Access logo PLoS transparent.svg
  20. Rubin, G. M. (2001). "The draft sequences: Comparing species". Nature. 409 (6822): 820–821. Bibcode:2001Natur.409..820R. doi: 10.1038/35057277 . PMID   11236995.
  21. Spellman, P. T.; Rubin, G. M. (2002). "Evidence for large domains of similarly expressed genes in the Drosophila genome". Journal of Biology. 1 (1): 5. doi: 10.1186/1475-4924-1-5 . PMC   117248 . PMID   12144710.
  22. McCarthy, Alice A. (April 2005). "Exelixis: Integrated Drug-Discovery and Development Platform for Human Therapeutics" (PDF). Chemistry & Biology. 12 (4): 407–408. doi: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2005.04.004 . PMID   15850973.
  23. "1983 AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize".
  24. Nair, Prashant (2016). "QnAs with Gerald M. Rubin". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 113 (48): 13543–13545. Bibcode:2016PNAS..11313543N. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1617474113 . ISSN   0027-8424. PMC   5137761 . PMID   27856746.
  25. "Gerald Rubin". www.nasonline.org.
  26. Robert Sanders, "UC Berkeley's Gerald Rubin shares AAAS prize with Celera's Craig Venter for sequencing genome of the fruit fly", UC Berkeley Campus News, Feb. 20, 2001.
  27. "Architect of the future: refocusing on basic research: R&D Magazine's 41st Scientist of the Year balances genomic research while spearheading one of the newest centers of basic research in the life sciences. (Cover story) - R & D -". 20 February 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-02-20.