Richard Axel

Last updated
Richard Axel
Professor Richard Axel ForMemRS.jpg
Axel in 2014
Born (1946-07-02) July 2, 1946 (age 78)
New York City, U.S.
Education
Spouse Cornelia Bargmann
Awards
Scientific career
Fields Neuroscience
Institutions Columbia University
Notable students
Website www.axellab.columbia.edu

Richard Axel (born July 2, 1946) is an American molecular biologist and university professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His work on the olfactory system won him and Linda Buck, a former postdoctoral research scientist in his group, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004.

Contents

Education and early life

Born in New York City to Polish Jewish immigrants, Axel grew up in Brooklyn. [1] He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1963, [2] (along with Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Allan Lichtman, Ron Silver, and Alexander Rosenberg), received his B.A. in 1967 from Columbia University, and his M.D. in 1971 from Johns Hopkins University. However, he was poorly suited to medicine and graduated on the promise to his department chairman that he would not practice clinically. [3] He found his calling in research and returned to Columbia later that year, eventually becoming a full professor in 1978.

Research and career

Richard Axel c. 2008 Richard Axel.jpg
Richard Axel c. 2008

During the late 1970s, Axel, along with microbiologist Saul J. Silverstein and geneticist Michael H. Wigler, discovered a technique of cotransformation via transfection, a process which allows foreign DNA to be inserted into a host cell to produce certain proteins. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] A family of patents, now colloquially referred to as the "Axel patents", covering this technique were filed for February 1980 and were issued in August 1983. [10] As a fundamental process in recombinant DNA research as performed at pharmaceutical and biotech companies, this patent proved quite lucrative for Columbia University, earning it almost $100 million a year at one time, and a top spot on the list of top universities by licensing revenue. [10] The Axel patents expired in August 2000.

In their landmark paper published in 1991, [11] Buck and Axel cloned olfactory receptors, showing that they belong to the family of G protein coupled receptors. By analyzing rat DNA, they estimated that there were approximately one thousand different genes for olfactory receptors in the mammalian genome. This research opened the door to the genetic and molecular analysis of the mechanisms of olfaction. In their later work, Buck and Axel have shown that each olfactory receptor neuron remarkably only expresses one kind of olfactory receptor protein and that the input from all neurons expressing the same receptor is collected by a single dedicated glomerulus of the olfactory bulb. [12]

Axel's primary research interest is on how the brain interprets the sense of smell, specifically mapping the parts of the brain that are sensitive to specific olfactory receptors. He holds the titles of University Professor at Columbia University, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and of Pathology at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In addition to contributions to neurobiology, Axel has also made seminal discoveries in immunology, and his lab was one of the first to identify the link between HIV infection and immunoreceptor CD4.

In addition to making contributions as a scientist, Axel has also mentored many leading scientists in the field of neurobiology. Seven of his trainees have become members of the National Academy of Sciences, and currently six of his trainees are affiliated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's investigator and early scientist award programs.

Awards and honors

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Axel has won numerous awards and honors. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences [13] in 1983. [14] In 2005, Axel received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. [15]

Axel was awarded the Double Helix Medal in 2007. CSHL Double Helix Medal Honoree and was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2014. His nomination reads:

Richard Axel is a distinguished molecular biologist and neuroscientist. He developed gene transfer techniques that permit the introduction of virtually any gene into any cell permitting the production of a large number of clinically important proteins and leading to the isolation of a gene for CD4, the cellular receptor for the AIDS virus, HIV. He then applied molecular biology to neuroscience revealing over a thousand genes involved in the recognition of odours, a discovery for which he shared the Nobel Prize in 2004. He currently explores how odour recognition is translated into internal representations in the brain. [16]

Personal life

Axel is married to fellow scientist and olfaction pioneer Cornelia Bargmann. [17] Previously, he had been married to Ann Axel, who is a social worker at Columbia University Medical Center. Owing to his tall stature, Axel played basketball during high school. [17]

See also

Related Research Articles

Howard Robert Horvitz ForMemRS NAS AAA&S APS NAM is an American biologist whose research on the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with Sydney Brenner and John E. Sulston, whose "seminal discoveries concerning the genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death" were "important for medical research and have shed new light on the pathogenesis of many diseases".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Olfactory receptor</span> Chemoreceptors expressed in cell membranes of olfactory receptor neurons

Olfactory receptors (ORs), also known as odorant receptors, are chemoreceptors expressed in the cell membranes of olfactory receptor neurons and are responsible for the detection of odorants which give rise to the sense of smell. Activated olfactory receptors trigger nerve impulses which transmit information about odor to the brain. In vertebrates, these receptors are members of the class A rhodopsin-like family of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). The olfactory receptors form the largest multigene family in vertebrates consisting of around 400 genes in humans and 1400 genes in mice. In insects, olfactory receptors are members of an unrelated group of ligand-gated ion channels.

Ronald Mark Evans is an American Biologist, Professor and Head of the Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory, and the March of Dimes Chair in Molecular and Developmental Biology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Dr. Ronald M. Evans is known for his original discoveries of nuclear hormone receptors (NR), a special class of transcriptional factor, and the elucidation of their universal mechanism of action, a process that governs how lipophilic hormones and drugs regulate virtually every developmental and metabolic pathway in animals and humans. Nowadays, NRs are among the most widely investigated group of pharmaceutical targets in the world, already yielding benefits in drug discovery for cancer, muscular dystrophies, osteoporosis, type II diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular diseases. His current research focuses on the function of nuclear hormone signaling and their function in metabolism and cancer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linda B. Buck</span> American biologist

Linda Brown Buck is an American biologist best known for her work on the olfactory system. She was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Richard Axel, for their work on olfactory receptors. She is currently on the faculty of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert G. Roeder</span> American biochemist

Robert G. Roeder is an American biochemist. He is known as a pioneer scientist in eukaryotic transcription. He discovered three distinct nuclear RNA polymerases in 1969 and characterized many proteins involved in the regulation of transcription, including basic transcription factors and the first mammalian gene-specific activator over five decades of research. He is the recipient of the Gairdner Foundation International Award in 2000, the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 2003, and the Kyoto Prize in 2021. He currently serves as Arnold and Mabel Beckman Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Biochemical and Molecular Biology at The Rockefeller University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard J. Roberts</span> British biochemist (born 1943)

Sir Richard John Roberts is a British biochemist and molecular biologist. He was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Phillip Allen Sharp for the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing. He currently works at New England Biolabs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Stuart Brown</span> American geneticist and Nobel laureate (born 1941)

Michael Stuart Brown ForMemRS NAS AAA&S APS is an American geneticist and Nobel laureate. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Joseph L. Goldstein in 1985 for describing the regulation of cholesterol metabolism.

Tom Maniatis, is an American professor of molecular and cellular biology. He is a professor at Columbia University, and serves as the Scientific Director and CEO of the New York Genome Center.

The antennal lobe is the primary olfactory brain area in insects. The antennal lobe is a sphere-shaped deutocerebral neuropil in the brain that receives input from the olfactory sensory neurons in the antennae and mouthparts. Functionally, it shares some similarities with the olfactory bulb in vertebrates. The anatomy and physiology function of the insect brain can be studied by dissecting open the insect brain and imaging or carrying out in vivo electrophysiological recordings from it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Yancopoulos</span> American biomedical scientist (born 1959)

George D. Yancopoulos is a Greek-American biomedical scientist who is the co-founder, president and chief scientific officer of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carol W. Greider</span> American molecular biologist and Nobel laureate

Carolyn Widney Greider is an American molecular biologist and Nobel laureate. She is a Distinguished Professor of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Richard D. Wood is an American molecular biologist specializing in research on DNA repair and mutation. He is known for pioneering studies on nucleotide excision repair (NER), particularly for reconstituting the minimum set of proteins involved in this process, identifying proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) as part of the NER complex and identifying mammalian repair polymerases.

Michael Howard Wigler is an American molecular biologist who has directed a laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory since 1978 and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is best known for developing methods to genetically engineer animal cells and his contributions to cancer, genomics and autism genetics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OR1D2</span> Protein-coding gene in the species Homo sapiens

Olfactory receptor 1D2 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the OR1D2 gene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OR13H1</span> Protein-coding gene in the species Homo sapiens

Olfactory receptor 13H1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the OR13H1 gene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cornelia Bargmann</span> American neurobiologist

Cornelia Isabella "Cori" Bargmann is an American neurobiologist. She is known for her work on the genetic and neural circuit mechanisms of behavior using C. elegans, particularly the mechanisms of olfaction in the worm. She has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and had been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at UCSF and then Rockefeller University from 1995 to 2016. She was the Head of Science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative from 2016 to 2022. In 2012 she was awarded the $1 million Kavli Prize, and in 2013 the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leslie B. Vosshall</span> American neurobiologist

Leslie Birgit Vosshall is an American neurobiologist and currently a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator and the Robin Chemers Neustein Professor of Neurogenetics and Behavior at The Rockefeller University. In 2022 she was appointed Chief Scientific Officer and vice president of HHMI. She is also the director of the Kavli Neural Systems Institute at The Rockefeller University. Vosshall, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, is known for her contributions to the field of olfaction, particularly for the discovery and subsequent characterization of the insect olfactory receptor family, and the genetic basis of chemosensory behavior in mosquitoes. She has also extended her research into the study of human olfaction, revealing parts of human genetic olfactory architecture, and finding variations in odorant receptors that determine individuals’ abilities to detect odors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tasuku Honjo</span> Japanese immunologist and Nobel laureate (born 1942)

Tasuku Honjo is a Japanese physician-scientist and immunologist. He won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and is best known for his identification of programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1). He is also known for his molecular identification of cytokines: IL-4 and IL-5, as well as the discovery of activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) that is essential for class switch recombination and somatic hypermutation.

Harold M. "Hal" Weintraub was an American scientist who lived from 1945 until his death in 1995 from an aggressive brain tumor. Only 49 years old, Weintraub left behind a legacy of research.

Sir Hugh Reginald Brentnall Pelham, is a cell biologist who has contributed to our understanding of the body's response to rises in temperature through the synthesis of heat shock proteins. He served as director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) between 2006 and 2018.

References

  1. ↑ "Laureate - Richard Axel". Lindau Nobel Mediatheque. 23 October 2018. Retrieved October 25, 2019.
  2. ↑ Eisner, Robin (Winter 2005). "Richard Axel: One of the Nobility in Science". P&S. Columbia University. Archived from the original on June 1, 2015. Retrieved October 31, 2007.
  3. ↑ McFadden, Johnjoe; Al-Khalili, Jim (2014). Life on the Edge : The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology (1st ed.). New York. pp. 144–145. ISBN   978-0-307-98681-8. OCLC   914329162.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  4. ↑ Pellicer, A; Wigler, M; Axel, R; Silverstein, S (1978). "The transfer and stable integration of the HSV thymidine kinase gene into mouse cells". Cell. 14 (1): 133–41. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(78)90308-2. PMID   208776. S2CID   20851317.
  5. ↑ Pellicer, A; Robins, D; Wold, B; Sweet, R; Jackson, J; Lowy, I; Roberts, J. M.; Sim, G. K.; Silverstein, S; Axel, R (1980). "Altering genotype and phenotype by DNA-mediated gene transfer". Science. 209 (4463): 1414–22. Bibcode:1980Sci...209.1414P. doi:10.1126/science.7414320. PMID   7414320.
  6. ↑ Wigler, M; Sweet, R; Sim, G. K.; Wold, B; Pellicer, A; Lacy, E; Maniatis, T; Silverstein, S; Axel, R (1979). "Transformation of mammalian cells with genes from procaryotes and eucaryotes". Cell. 16 (4): 777–85. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(79)90093-x. PMID   222468. S2CID   25495031.
  7. ↑ Wigler, M; Pellicer, A; Silverstein, S; Axel, R; Urlaub, G; Chasin, L (1979). "DNA-mediated transfer of the adenine phosphoribosyltransferase locus into mammalian cells". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 76 (3): 1373–6. Bibcode:1979PNAS...76.1373W. doi: 10.1073/pnas.76.3.1373 . PMC   383253 . PMID   286319.
  8. ↑ Wigler, M; Silverstein, S; Lee, L. S.; Pellicer, A; Cheng, Yc; Axel, R (1977). "Transfer of purified herpes virus thymidine kinase gene to cultured mouse cells". Cell. 11 (1): 223–32. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(77)90333-6. PMID   194704. S2CID   46090608.
  9. ↑ Maddon, P. J.; Dalgleish, A. G.; McDougal, J. S.; Clapham, P. R.; Weiss, R. A.; Axel, R (1986). "The T4 gene encodes the AIDS virus receptor and is expressed in the immune system and the brain". Cell. 47 (3): 333–48. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(86)90590-8. PMID   3094962. S2CID   20377918.
  10. 1 2 Colaianni, A; Cook-Deegan, R (2009). "Columbia University's Axel patents: Technology transfer and implications for the Bayh-Dole Act". Milbank Quarterly. 87 (3): 683–715. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0009.2009.00575.x. PMC   2750841 . PMID   19751286.
  11. ↑ Buck, L.; Axel, R. (1991). "A novel multigene family may encode odorant receptors: A molecular basis for odor recognition". Cell. 65 (1): 175–187. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(91)90418-X . PMID   1840504.
  12. ↑ Mombaerts, P; Wang, F; Dulac, C; Chao, S. K.; Nemes, A; Mendelsohn, M; Edmondson, J; Axel, R (1996). "Visualizing an olfactory sensory map". Cell. 87 (4): 675–86. doi: 10.1016/s0092-8674(00)81387-2 . PMID   8929536. S2CID   7999466.
  13. ↑ "Richard Axel". www.nasonline.org.
  14. ↑ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter A" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved April 28, 2011.
  15. ↑ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.
  16. ↑ "Professor Richard Axel ForMemRS". London: The Royal Society. Archived from the original on December 20, 2014.
  17. 1 2 Richard Axel on Nobelprize.org OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg , accessed 11 October 2020
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.