Charles Yanofsky (April 17, 1925 – March 16, 2018) was an American
geneticist
A geneticist is a biologist or physician who studies genetics, the science of genes, heredity, and variation of organisms. A geneticist can be employed as a scientist or a lecturer. Geneticists may perform general research on genetic processes ...
on the faculty of Stanford University who contributed to the establishment of the one gene-one enzyme hypothesis and discovered attenuation, a riboswitch mechanism in which messenger RNA changes shape in response to a small molecule and thus alters its binding ability for the regulatory region of a gene or operon.
Education and early life
Charles Yanofsky was born on April 17, 1925 in
New York.
He was one of the earliest graduates of the Bronx High School of Science,
then studied at the
City College of New York and completed his degree in biochemistry in spite of having had his education interrupted by military service in World War II including participation in the Battle of the Bulge.
In 1948, having returned and completed college, he took up graduate work towards his master's degree and PhD, both granted by
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
.
He pursued postdoctoral work at Yale for a time, completing work started during his PhD training.
Career and research
Yanofsky joined the Case Western Reserve Medical School faculty in 1954.
He moved to the faculty at Stanford University as an Associate Professor in 1958.
In 1964, Yanofsky and colleagues established that
gene
In biology, the word gene (from , ; "... Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a b ...
sequences and
protein
Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, res ...
sequences are colinear in bacteria. Yanofsky showed that changes in
DNA sequence can produce changes in protein sequence at corresponding positions. His work is considered the best evidence in favor of the one gene-one enzyme hypothesis.
His laboratory also revealed how controlled alterations in
RNA shapes allow RNA to serve as a regulatory molecule in both
bacteria
Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one Cell (biology), biological cell. They constitute a large domain (biology), domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometr ...
l and animal cells. His graduate student
Iwona Stroynowski and
Mitzi Kuroda discovered the process of attenuation of expression based on regulated binding ability of the
five-prime untranslated region of the
messenger RNA for the bacterial tryptophan operon. They had thus discovered the first regulatory
riboswitch
In molecular biology, a riboswitch is a regulatory segment of a messenger RNA molecule that binds a small molecule, resulting in a change in production of the proteins encoded by the mRNA. Thus, an mRNA that contains a riboswitch is directly in ...
, although that terminology was not used until later. Yanofsky and his other collaborators then extended this work showing how mRNAs responded allosterically to a small molecule signal by changing shape and therefore changing ability to bind to the regulatory region of each operon. They showed that this mechanism applied to other amino acid biosynthesis and degradation operons of bacteria and to animal cell genes.
In 1980, Yanofsky and other Stanford scientists founded DNAX, a Palo Alto-based research institute subsequently acquired by Schering-Plough.
Yanofsky died in
Palo Alto
Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto.
The city was es ...
,
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
. At the time of death, he was the Morris Herzstein Professor of Biology and Molecular Biology (Emeritus) in the Department of Biology at
Stanford University.
Personal life
Charles Yanofsky's first wife Carol died of breast cancer in 1990.
He was survived by his second wife, Edna, and three sons.
Awards and honors
Charles Yanofsky received the
Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, sometimes referred to as the American Nobel prize, in 1971.
Yanofsky was awarded the
Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology from the
National Academy of Sciences in 1972
and was co-recipient of the
Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize
The Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize for Biology or Biochemistry is an annual prize awarded by Columbia University to a researcher or group of researchers who have made an outstanding contribution in basic research in the fields of biology or biochemist ...
from
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
in 1976 with
Seymour Benzer. Yanofsky was elected a foreign member of the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
in 1985 and was one of the recipients of the 2003
National Medal of Science
The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...
awards.
Major Publications
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yanofsky, Charles
1925 births
2018 deaths
American geneticists
Jewish American scientists
National Medal of Science laureates
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Foreign Members of the Royal Society
Yale University alumni
Stanford University Department of Biology faculty
Recipients of the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research
City College of New York alumni
20th-century American biologists
21st-century American scientists
21st-century biologists
United States Army personnel of World War II
21st-century American Jews
Scientists from New York City