Kary Banks Mullis was an American biochemist. In recognition of his role in the invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique, he shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Michael Smith and was awarded the Japan Prize in the same year. PCR became a central technique in biochemistry and molecular biology, described by The New York Times as "highly original and significant, virtually dividing biology into the two epochs of before PCR and after PCR." Mullis attracted controversy for downplaying humans' role in climate change and for expressing doubts that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS.
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.
Spermidine is a polyamine compound found in ribosomes and living tissues and having various metabolic functions within organisms. It was originally isolated from semen.
Carl Zimmer is a popular science writer, blogger, columnist, and journalist who specializes in the topics of evolution, parasites, and heredity. The author of many books, he contributes science essays to publications such as The New York Times, Discover, and National Geographic. He is a fellow at Yale University's Morse College and adjunct professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University. Zimmer also gives frequent lectures and has appeared on many radio shows, including National Public Radio's Radiolab, Fresh Air, and This American Life.
Joseph Lyman DeRisi is an American biochemist, specializing in molecular biology, parasitology, genomics, virology, and computational biology.
Flap endonucleases are a class of nucleolytic enzymes that act as both 5'-3' exonucleases and structure-specific endonucleases on specialised DNA structures that occur during the biological processes of DNA replication, DNA repair, and DNA recombination. Flap endonucleases have been identified in eukaryotes, prokaryotes, archaea, and some viruses. Organisms can have more than one FEN homologue; this redundancy may give an indication of the importance of these enzymes. In prokaryotes, the FEN enzyme is found as an N-terminal domain of DNA polymerase I, but some prokaryotes appear to encode a second homologue.
Donald L. D. Caspar was an American structural biologist known for his works on the structures of biological molecules, particularly of the tobacco mosaic virus. He was an emeritus professor of biological science at the Institute of Molecular Biophysics, Florida State University, and an emeritus professor of biology at the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center, Brandeis University. He has made significant scientific contributions in virus biology, X-ray, neutron and electron diffraction, and protein plasticity.
David S. Goodsell, is an associate professor at the Scripps Research Institute and research professor at Rutgers University, New Jersey. He is especially known for his watercolor paintings of cell interiors.
Jennifer Anne Doudna is an American biochemist who has done pioneering work in CRISPR gene editing, and made other fundamental contributions in biochemistry and genetics. Doudna was one of the first women to share a Nobel in the sciences. She received the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, with Emmanuelle Charpentier, "for the development of a method for genome editing." She is the Li Ka Shing Chancellor's Chair Professor in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She has been an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1997.
Paul B. Sigler was the Henry Ford II Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University. Major awards included membership in the National Academy of Sciences, HHMI Investigator status, and Guggenheim and Helen Hay Whitney Fellowships. He is noted for pioneering studies of Phospholipase A2 and trp repressor amongst many others.
Lloyd M. Kozloff (1923–2012) was an American microbiologist and virologist. He served on the faculty of the University of Chicago, the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, and University of California, San Francisco, where he became dean of the UCSF Graduate Division. Kozloff retired from UCSF in 1993. He died of heart failure in 2012.
Perdur Radhakantha Adiga was an Indian endocrine biochemist, reproductive biologist, INSA Senior Scientist and an Astra chair professor of the Indian Institute of Science. He was known for his researches on vitamin-carrier proteins and Lathyrus sativus and was an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Medical Sciences in 1980.
Robert Dale Slocum is an American biologist and botanist. He is a professor of biology in the Center for Natural Sciences at Goucher College. His research focuses on plant physiology, molecular biology, and biotechnology.
Finn Wold was a Norwegian-American biochemist known for the elucidation of structure-function relationships of proteins. Wold was a pioneer in the use of reagents to measure and decipher the structures of proteins. He reported one of the first examples of a transition state analogue, and was at the forefront of the design and use of affinity labels.
James Standish Clegg is a Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry at University of California, Davis, based at the Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute (CMSI) in Bodega Bay, California. He served as director of the Bodega Marine Laboratory (BML) from 1986 to 1999 and as president of the National Association Marine Laboratories (NAML) from 1991 to 1993.
Katherine A. Jones is a professor of regulatory biology and the Edwin K. Hunter Chair at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. She uses proteomics to study transcription elongation and molecular biology to understand protein coordination. Jones identified elongation factors, a class of proteins which are important in viral gene expression.
Shamshad Cockcroft is a British physiologist and a professor of cell physiology in the Neuro, Physiology and Pharmacology Division of Biosciences at the UCL. She has been a member of The Physiological Society since 1989.
Charles Clifton Richardson is an American biochemist and professor at Harvard University. Richardson received his undergraduate education at Duke University, where he majored in medicine. He received his M.D. at Duke Medical School in 1960. Richardson works as a professor at Harvard Medical School, and he served as editor/associate editor of the Annual Review of Biochemistry from 1972 to 2003. Richardson received the American Chemical Society Award in Biological Chemistry in 1968, as well as numerous other accolades.
Gerard Robert Wyatt was an American-Canadian biochemist and entomologist, specializing in insect physiology. He is known for important research on DNA.
Constance Joan Jeffery is an American biophysicist and an associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Illinois Chicago. She was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2022. Jeffery is known for her work with multifunctional proteins.
