Jack William Szostak (born November 9, 1952) is a Canadian American
[ ]biologist
A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...
of Polish British
British Poles, alternatively known as Polish British people or Polish Britons, are ethnic Poles who are citizens of the United Kingdom. The term includes people born in the UK who are of Polish descent and Polish-born people who reside in the UK ...
descent, Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
laureate, university professor at the University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
, former Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...
, and Alexander Rich Distinguished Investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the third oldest general hospital in the United Stat ...
, Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
. Szostak has made significant contributions to the field of genetics
Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...
. His achievement helped scientists to map the location of 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 ba ...
s in mammals and to develop techniques for manipulating genes. His research findings in this area are also instrumental to the Human Genome Project
The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying, mapping and sequencing all of the genes of the human genome from both a ...
. He was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, according ...
, along with Elizabeth Blackburn
Elizabeth Helen Blackburn, (born 26 November 1948) is an Australian-American Nobel laureate who is the former president of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Previously she was a biological researcher at the University of California, S ...
and Carol W. Greider
Carolyn Widney Greider (born April 15, 1961) is an American molecular biologist and Nobel laureate. She joined the University of California, Santa Cruz as a Distinguished Professor in the department of molecular, cell, and developmental biology ...
, for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomere
A telomere (; ) is a region of repetitive nucleotide sequences associated with specialized proteins at the ends of linear chromosomes. Although there are different architectures, telomeres, in a broad sense, are a widespread genetic feature mos ...
s.
Education and early life
Szostak grew up in Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...
and Ottawa
Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...
. Although Szostak does not speak Polish, he stated in an interview with Wprost
''Wprost'' (, meaning "Directly") is a Polish-language weekly news magazine published in Poznań, Poland. weekly that he remembers his Polish roots. He attended Riverdale High School (Quebec)
Riverdale High School (often abbreviated as RHS) was an English language secondary school, in the Pierrefonds-Roxboro borough of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The school was part of the Lester B. Pearson School Board and was designated a "community s ...
and graduated at the age of 15 with the scholars prize. He graduated with a B.Sc
A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years.
The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...
in cell biology
Cell biology (also cellular biology or cytology) is a branch of biology that studies the structure, function, and behavior of cells. All living organisms are made of cells. A cell is the basic unit of life that is responsible for the living and ...
from McGill University
McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Universit ...
at the age of 19. In 1970, as an undergraduate, he participated in The Jackson Laboratory
The Jackson Laboratory (often abbreviated as JAX) is an independent, non-profit biomedical research institution which was founded by a eugenicist. It employs more than 3,000 employees in Bar Harbor, Maine; Sacramento, California; Farmington, Con ...
's Summer Student Program under the mentorship of Dr. Chen K. Chai. He completed his PhD PHD or PhD may refer to:
* Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification
Entertainment
* '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series
* ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic
* Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group
** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...
in biochemistry
Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...
at Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
(advisor Prof. Ray Wu) before moving to Harvard Medical School to start his own lab at the Sidney Farber Cancer Institute. He credits Ruth Sager
Ruth Sager (February 7, 1918 – March 29, 1997) was an American geneticist. Sager enjoyed two scientific careers. Her first was in the 1950s and 1960s when she pioneered the field of cytoplasmic genetics by discovering transmission of genetic tr ...
for giving him his job there when he had little yet to show. In 1984 Howard Goodman recruited him to Massachusetts General Hospital and the Department of Molecular Biology. He was granted tenure and a full professorship at Harvard Medical School in 1988. In 2022, he moved to the University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
as a university professor in the Department of Chemistry and the College.
Research and career
Szostak has made contributions to the field of genetics
Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...
. He is credited with the construction of the world's first yeast artificial chromosome
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 ...
. That achievement helped scientists to map the location of 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 ba ...
s in mammals and to develop techniques for manipulating genes. His achievements in this area are also instrumental to the Human Genome Project
The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying, mapping and sequencing all of the genes of the human genome from both a ...
.
His discoveries have helped to clarify the events that lead to chromosomal recombination—the reshuffling of genes that occurs during meiosis
Meiosis (; , since it is a reductional division) is a special type of cell division of germ cells in sexually-reproducing organisms that produces the gametes, such as sperm or egg cells. It involves two rounds of division that ultimately resu ...
—and the function of telomere
A telomere (; ) is a region of repetitive nucleotide sequences associated with specialized proteins at the ends of linear chromosomes. Although there are different architectures, telomeres, in a broad sense, are a widespread genetic feature mos ...
s, the specialized DNA sequences at the tips of chromosomes.
In the early 90s his laboratory shifted its research direction and focused on studying RNA enzymes, which had been recently discovered by Cech and Altman. He developed the technique of in vitro evolution of RNA (also developed independently by Gerald Joyce
Gerald Francis "Jerry" Joyce (born 1956) is a senior vice president and chief science officer at Salk Institute for Biological Studies and was previously the director of the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation. He is best known ...
) which enables the discovery of RNAs with desired functions through successive cycles of selection, amplification and mutation. He isolated the first aptamer
Aptamers are short sequences of artificial DNA, RNA, XNA, or peptide that bind a specific target molecule, or family of target molecules. They exhibit a range of affinities ( KD in the pM to μM range), with little or no off-target binding ...
(term he used for the first time). He isolated RNA enzymes with RNA ligase activity directly from random sequence (project of David Bartel
David P. Bartel is an American molecular biologist best known for his work on microRNAs. Bartel is a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Member of the Whitehead Institute, and investigator of the Howard Hughes Medi ...
).
Currently, his lab focuses on the challenges of understanding the origin of life
In biology, abiogenesis (from a- 'not' + Greek bios 'life' + genesis 'origin') or the origin of life is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothes ...
on Earth, and the construction of artificial cellular life in the laboratory. They have conducted detailed studies of mechanisms by which RNA templates may have replicated on early earth before the emergence of enzyme catalysts. In particular, they have focused on imidazole
Imidazole (ImH) is an organic compound with the formula C3N2H4. It is a white or colourless solid that is soluble in water, producing a mildly alkaline solution. In chemistry, it is an aromatic heterocycle, classified as a diazole Diazole refers ...
-activated ribonucleotides ( phosphorimidazolides) as monomers capable of elongating a new RNA strand. Significantly, the Szostak group discovered that phosphorimidazolide-mediated template elongation occurs via 5'-5'-imidazolium bridged dinucleotide intermediates which accelerate polymerization. Phosphorimidazolides were first proposed to be critical for early-earth nucleotide polymerization by Leslie E. Orgel and colleagues.
Szostak and Katarzyna Adamala demonstrated that the issues of a degrading effect of magnesium ions on RNA and the disruption of a fatty acid membrane by magnesium ions can be simultaneously solved by the presence of weak cation chelator like citric acid in primitive protocells.
Beyond his research, he has delivered talks about the origin of life on Earth, as he did at the first Starmus Festival
The Starmus International Festival is an international gathering focused on celebrating astronomy, space exploration, music, art, and other sciences such as biology and chemistry. It was founded by Garik Israelian, an astronomer at the Institu ...
in the Canary Islands, in 2011. He subsequently joined the Starmus Board of Directors, and his 2011 lecture was published in the book ''Starmus: 50 Years of Man in Space''.
In September 2022, Szostak joined the faculty of the University of Chicago as university professor, leading a new interdisciplinary program called the Origins of Life Initiative.
Awards and honors
Szostak has received several awards and honors for his contributions. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
and New York Academy of Sciences
The New York Academy of Sciences (originally the Lyceum of Natural History) was founded in January 1817 as the Lyceum of Natural History. It is the fourth oldest scientific society in the United States. An independent, nonprofit organization wit ...
, the American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
, and is a member of the Kosciuszko Foundation
The Kosciuszko Foundation is a charitable foundation based in New York City. It was created by Stephen Mizwa to fund programs that promote Polish-American intellectual and artistic exchange.
History
The Polish American Scholarship Committee was ...
Collegium of Eminent Scientists of Polish Origin and Ancestry.
He has received the following awards:
* United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
Award in Molecular Biology
* Hans Sigrist Prize, University of Bern, Switzerland
* Genetics Society of America Medal The Genetics Society of American Medal is a medal awarded by the Genetics Society of America (GSA) for outstanding contributions to the field of genetics in the last 15 years.
The Medal was established by society in 1981 and recognizes members who ...
* The 2006 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research
* The 2008 Dr H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...
* The 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, according ...
(shared with Elizabeth Blackburn
Elizabeth Helen Blackburn, (born 26 November 1948) is an Australian-American Nobel laureate who is the former president of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Previously she was a biological researcher at the University of California, S ...
and Carol W. Greider
Carolyn Widney Greider (born April 15, 1961) is an American molecular biologist and Nobel laureate. She joined the University of California, Santa Cruz as a Distinguished Professor in the department of molecular, cell, and developmental biology ...
)
* The 2011 Oparin Medal
The Oparin/Urey Medal honours important contributions to the field of origins of life. The medal is awarded by the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life ( ISSOL). The award was originally named for Alexander Ivanovich Oparin, ...
An organism's genes are stored within DNA molecules, which are found in chromosomes inside its cells' nuclei. When a cell divides, it is important that its chromosomes are copied in full, and that they are not damaged. At each end of a chromosome lies a "cap" or telomere, as it is known, which protects it. After Elizabeth Blackburn discovered that telomeres have a particular DNA, through experiments conducted on ciliates and yeast, she and Jack Szostak proved in 1982 that the telomeres' DNA prevents chromosomes from being broken down,
according to the statement released by the Alfred Nobel Foundation.
Personal life
Szostak was married to Terri-Lynn McCormick and has two sons. He has two sisters, Carolyn Szostak and Kathy Hysen.[http://yourlifemoments.ca/sitepages/obituary.asp?oid=992205 Obituary of Szostak's mother, with family details.]
References
External links
*
*
*
* including the Nobel Lecture on December 7, 2009 ''DNA Ends: Just the Beginning''
Nobel Prize information
- Press release
Szostak Lab website
Jack Szostak's Lecture: "The Origin of Life on Earth"
Last interview of Dr. Jack Szostak
{{DEFAULTSORT:Szostak, Jack W.
1952 births
Cornell University alumni
Harvard Medical School faculty
American geneticists
American molecular biologists
American Nobel laureates
Canadian molecular biologists
Living people
Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine
McGill University Faculty of Science alumni
Howard Hughes Medical Investigators
British people of Polish descent
Canadian people of Polish descent
American people of Polish descent
British emigrants to the United States
Canadian Nobel laureates
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Winners of the Heineken Prize
Recipients of the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research
Synthetic biologists
Canadian Fellows of the Royal Society