John A. Carbon | |
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Nationality | American |
Education | University of Illinois (B.S. 1952), Northwestern University (Ph.D., 1955) |
Known for | Carbon-Clarke equation, shotgun clone libraries, artificial chromosomes |
Spouse | Louise B. Clarke |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Genetic missense suppression, centromeres |
Institutions | Abbott Laboratories (North Chicago, Illinois), University of California, Santa Barbara |
John A. Carbon is a professor emeritus of molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
He earned his B.S. degree in chemistry in 1952 at the University of Illinois, and his Ph.D. degree in biochemistry in 1955 from Northwestern University. He did basic research developing new anticancer drugs at Abbott Laboratories (North Chicago, IL) for 12 years (1956-1968). He joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1968, and became professor emeritus in 1999. His research contributions include elucidation of the mechanism of genetic missense suppression in bacteria, the development of techniques to make genomic libraries using recombinant DNA, techniques for using yeast for DNA cloning, characterization of centromere DNA, and construction of the first artificial chromosomes. Many of his later research contributions were carried out in collaboration with his wife, Professor Louise B. Clarke. He was elected to membership in the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986. Carbon was among the founding scientific advisors of the Amgen Corporation. An endowed chair in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UC Santa Barbara was named for Carbon. The chair is currently held by Jamey Marth. [1]
Carbon and Louise Clarke, his wife, published the Carbon-Clarke equation in 1976, used for calculating the number of clones required when constructing a clone library to ensure a given probability (usually > 99% is desired) of containing any sequence, given the size of the genome and the average size of a clone. [2]
The centromere links a pair of sister chromatids together during cell division. This constricted region of chromosome connects the sister chromatids, creating a short arm (p) and a long arm (q) on the chromatids. During mitosis, spindle fibers attach to the centromere via the kinetochore.
Molecular biology is a branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecular basis of biological activity in and between cells, including biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactions.
Schizosaccharomyces pombe, also called "fission yeast", is a species of yeast used in traditional brewing and as a model organism in molecular and cell biology. It is a unicellular eukaryote, whose cells are rod-shaped. Cells typically measure 3 to 4 micrometres in diameter and 7 to 14 micrometres in length. Its genome, which is approximately 14.1 million base pairs, is estimated to contain 4,970 protein-coding genes and at least 450 non-coding RNAs.
Yeast artificial chromosomes (YACs) are genetically engineered chromosomes derived from the DNA of the yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is then ligated into a bacterial plasmid. By inserting large fragments of DNA, from 100–1000 kb, the inserted sequences can be cloned and physically mapped using a process called chromosome walking. This is the process that was initially used for the Human Genome Project, however due to stability issues, YACs were abandoned for the use of bacterial artificial chromosome
In molecular biology, a library is a collection of genetic material fragments that are stored and propagated in a population of microbes through the process of molecular cloning. There are different types of DNA libraries, including cDNA libraries, genomic libraries and randomized mutant libraries. DNA library technology is a mainstay of current molecular biology, genetic engineering, and protein engineering, and the applications of these libraries depend on the source of the original DNA fragments. There are differences in the cloning vectors and techniques used in library preparation, but in general each DNA fragment is uniquely inserted into a cloning vector and the pool of recombinant DNA molecules is then transferred into a population of bacteria or yeast such that each organism contains on average one construct. As the population of organisms is grown in culture, the DNA molecules contained within them are copied and propagated.
Recombinant DNA (rDNA) molecules are DNA molecules formed by laboratory methods of genetic recombination that bring together genetic material from multiple sources, creating sequences that would not otherwise be found in the genome.
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A genomic library is a collection of overlapping DNA fragments that together make up the total genomic DNA of a single organism. The DNA is stored in a population of identical vectors, each containing a different insert of DNA. In order to construct a genomic library, the organism's DNA is extracted from cells and then digested with a restriction enzyme to cut the DNA into fragments of a specific size. The fragments are then inserted into the vector using DNA ligase. Next, the vector DNA can be taken up by a host organism - commonly a population of Escherichia coli or yeast - with each cell containing only one vector molecule. Using a host cell to carry the vector allows for easy amplification and retrieval of specific clones from the library for analysis.
Jeffrey Lynn Bennetzen is an American geneticist on the faculty of the University of Georgia (UGA). Bennetzen is known for his work describing codon usage bias in yeast, and E. coli; being the first to clone and sequence an active transposon in plants, discovering that most of the DNA in plant genomes was a particular class of mobile DNA (LTR-retrotransposons); solving the C-value paradox; proposing sorghum and Setaria as model grasses; showing that rice centromeres were hotspots for recombination, but not crossovers; and developing a technique to date polyploidization events. He is an author, with Sarah Hake of the book "Handbook of Maize." Bennetzen was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2004.
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Kaustuv Sanyal is an Indian molecular biologist, mycologist and Director of Bose Institute in Kolkata. He is a professor at the Molecular Biology and Genetics Unit of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR). He is known for his molecular and genetic studies of pathogenic yeasts such as Candida and Cryptococcus). An alumnus of Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya and Madurai Kamaraj University from where he earned a BSc in agriculture and MSc in biotechnology respectively, Sanyal did his doctoral studies at Bose Institute to secure a PhD in Yeast genetics. He moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA to work in the laboratory of John Carbon on the discovery of centromeres in Candida albicans. He joined JNCASR in 2005. He is a member of the Faculty of 1000 in the disciplines of Microbial Evolution and Genomics and has delivered invited speeches which include the Gordon Research Conference, EMBO conferences on comparative genomics and kinetochores. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to biosciences, in 2012. He has also been awarded with the prestigious Tata Innovation Fellowship in 2017. The National Academy of Sciences, India elected him as a fellow in 2014. He is also an elected fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences (2017), and the Indian National Science Academy (2018). In 2019, he has been elected to Fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM), the honorific leadership group within the American Society for Microbiology. He was awarded the J.C. Bose National Fellowship in 2020.
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