Carol W. Greider

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Carol Greider
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Born April 15, 1961 (1961-04-15) (age 49)
San Diego, California
Residence United States of America
Nationality American
Fields Molecular biology
Institutions Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Johns Hopkins University
Alma mater Davis Senior High School(1979)
University of California, Santa Barbara(1983)
University of California, Berkeley(1987)
Doctoral advisor Elizabeth Blackburn
Known for discovery of Telomerase
Notable awards Lasker Award, Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (2009)
Carolyn Widney "Carol" Greider (born April 15, 1961) is currently a molecular biologist at the Johns Hopkins University. She discovered the enzyme Telomerase in 1984, when she was a graduate student of Elizabeth Blackburn at the University of California, Berkeley. Greider pioneered research on the structure of Telomeres, the ends of the Chromosomes. She was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Blackburn and Jack W. Szostak of Boston, Massachusetts, for their discovery that telomeres are protected from progressive shortening by the enzyme Telomerase.[1]

Contents

Life and career

Greider was born in San Diego, California.[2] Her father, Kenneth Greider, was a physics professor.[3] Her family moved from San Diego to Davis, California, where she spent many of her early years. She graduated from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a B.A. in biology in 1983. During this time she also studied at the University of Göttingen and made significant discoveries there.[4] She completed her Ph.D. in molecular biology in 1987 at the University of California, Berkeley, under Elizabeth Blackburn. While at U.C. Berkeley, Greider co-discovered Telomerase, a key enzyme in cancer and anemia research, along with Blackburn.

Greider then completed her postdoctoral work, and also held a faculty position, at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Long Island, New York. During this time, Greider, in collaboration with Ronald A. DePinho, produced the first telomerase Knockout mouse, showing that although telomerase is dispensable for life, increasingly short telomeres result in various deleterious phenotypes, colloquially referred to as premature aging. She next moved on to a faculty position at the Johns Hopkins University in 1997, where she remains employed. Greider is the Daniel Nathans Professor and the Director of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Johns Hopkins Institute of Basic Biomedical Sciences.

Greider has two children: Charles, 13, and Gwendolyn, 10.

Discovery of telomerase

Greider joined the laboratory of Elizabeth Blackburn in April, 1984, and took on a project Blackburn considered intimidating: finding the enzyme that was hypothesized to add extra DNA bases to the ends of chromosomes. Without the extra bases, which are added as repeats of a six base pair motif, chromosomes are shortened during DNA replication, eventually resulting in chromosome deterioration and Senescence or cancer-causing chromosome fusion. Blackburn and Greider looked for the enzyme in the model organism Tetrahymena thermophila, a fresh-water protozoan with a large number of telomeres. Blackburn reports that Greider approached the research with diligence, often working twelve-hour shifts in the lab.[5]

On Christmas day, 1984, Greider first obtained results indicating that she had found the responsible enzyme. An additional six months of research led Greider and Blackburn to the conclusion that they had, indeed, identified the enzyme responsible for telomere addition. They published their findings in the journal Cell in December, 1985.[6] The enzyme, originally called "telomere terminal transferase," is now known as telomerase.

Awards and honors

Selected works

  • Greider, C. W.; Blackburn, E. H. (1985). "Identification of a specific telomere terminal transferase activity in Tetrahymena extracts". Cell 43 (2 Pt. 1): 405–413 . doi:10.1016/0092-8674(85)90170-9. PMID 3907856. 
  • Greider, C. W.; Blackburn, E. H. (1996). "Telomeres, Telomerase and Cancer". Scientific American: 92–97 . 

See also

References

  1. ^ "Blackburn, Greider, and Szostak share Nobel". Dolan DNA Learning Center. http://blogs.dnalc.org/dnaftb/2009/10/05/blackburn-greider-and-szostak-share-nobel-for-telomeres/. Retrieved 2009-10-05. 
  2. ^ Hopkins “Telomere” expert Carol Greider shares Germany's largest science prize
  3. ^ http://theaggie.org/article/former-davis-resident-receives-nobel-prize
  4. ^ Press release, University of Göttingen (9 Dec. 2009). (German)
  5. ^ doi:10.1073/pnas.0503019102
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  6. ^ PMID 3907856 (PubMed)
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  7. ^ NAS Online ("For her pioneering biochemical and genetic studies of telomerase, the enzyme that maintains the ends of chromosomes in eukaryotic cells.")
  8. ^ "Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009". Nobel Foundation. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/. Retrieved 2009-10-05. 

Further reading

External links

v • d • e
Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine
v • d • e
2009 Nobel Prize winners

pnb:کیرل گرائیدر

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