Jerzy Władysław Jurka (June 4, 1950 – July 19, 2014) was a

Polish-American Polish Americans ( pl, Polonia amerykańska) are Americans who either have total or partial Poles, Polish ancestry, or are citizens of the Republic of Poland. There are an estimated 9.15 million self-identified Polish Americans, representing abou ...

computational Computation is any type of arithmetic or non-arithmetic calculation that follows a well-defined model (e.g., an algorithm). Mechanical or electronic devices (or, historically, people) that perform computations are known as ''computers''. An espe ...

and molecular biologist. He served as the assistant director of research at the

Linus Pauling Institute The Linus Pauling Institute is a research institute located at the Oregon State University with a focus on health maintenance. The mission statement of the institute is to determine the functional roles of micronutrients and phytochemicals in pr ...

prior to founding the

Genetic Information Research Institute The Genetic Information Research Institute (GIRI) is a non-profit institution that was founded in 1994 by Jerzy Jurka. The mission of the institute "is to understand biological processes which alter the genetic makeup of different organisms, as a b ...

. He collaborated with several notable scientists including

Linus Pauling Linus Carl Pauling (; February 28, 1901August 19, 1994) was an American chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, and educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific top ...

George Irving Bell George Irving Bell (August 4, 1926 – May 28, 2000) was an American physicist, biologist and mountaineer, and a grandson of John Joseph Seerley.Roy Britten Roy John Britten (1 October 1919 – 21 January 2012) was an American molecular biologist known for his discovery of repeated DNA sequences in the genomes of eukaryotic organisms, and later on the evolution of the genome. Early life and educati ...

Temple Smith Temple Ferris Smith (born March 7, 1939) is an emeritus professor in biomedical engineering who helped to develop the Smith-Waterman algorithm with Michael Waterman in 1981. The Smith-Waterman algorithm serves as the basis for multi sequence com ...

, and

Emile Zuckerkandl Émile Zuckerkandl (July 4, 1922 – November 9, 2013) was an Austrian-born French biologist considered one of the founders of the field of molecular evolution. He introduced, with Linus Pauling, the concept of the "molecular clock", which enab ...

. His

Erdős number The Erdős number () describes the "collaborative distance" between mathematician Paul Erdős and another person, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers. The same principle has been applied in other fields where a particular individual ...

is 3, using the path through

and

Stanislaw Ulam Stanisław Marcin Ulam (; 13 April 1909 – 13 May 1984) was a Polish-American scientist in the fields of mathematics and nuclear physics. He participated in the Manhattan Project, originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapon ...

Research

Dr. Jurka is best known for his work on eukaryotic

transposable elements A transposable element (TE, transposon, or jumping gene) is a nucleic acid sequence in DNA that can change its position within a genome, sometimes creating or reversing mutations and altering the cell's genetic identity and genome size. Trans ...

(TEs), including the discovery of the major families of

Alu element An Alu element is a short stretch of DNA originally characterized by the action of the ''Arthrobacter luteus (Alu)'' restriction endonuclease. ''Alu'' elements are the most abundant transposable elements, containing over one million copies disp ...

s. He also proposed the mechanism of Alu proliferation and discovered their paternal transmission. The majority of known types of class II TEs, or DNA

transposons A transposable element (TE, transposon, or jumping gene) is a nucleic acid sequence in DNA that can change its position within a genome, sometimes creating or reversing mutations and altering the cell's genetic identity and genome size. Tran ...

, were discovered or co-discovered by his team at the

, based on DNA sequence analysis. The first one, reported in 2001 with Vladimir Kapitonov, became known as '' Helitron'', which is playing a major role in genomic

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

. In 2006 they reported a study of a new, self-synthesizing

transposable element A transposable element (TE, transposon, or jumping gene) is a nucleic acid sequence in DNA that can change its position within a genome, sometimes creating or reversing mutations and altering the cell's genetic identity and genome size. Transp ...

called

Polinton Polintons (also called Mavericks) are large DNA transposons which contain genes with homology to viral proteins and which are often found in eukaryotic genomes. They were first discovered in the mid-2000s and are the largest and most complex kno ...

or Maverick, which is present many diverse

eukaryotes Eukaryotes () are organisms whose cells have a nucleus. All animals, plants, fungi, and many unicellular organisms, are Eukaryotes. They belong to the group of organisms Eukaryota or Eukarya, which is one of the three domains of life. Bacte ...

. More recently, Jurka and his co-workers presented a hypothesis that links the origin of repetitive families (TE families), to population subdivision and

speciation Speciation is the evolutionary process by which populations evolve to become distinct species. The biologist Orator F. Cook coined the term in 1906 for cladogenesis, the splitting of lineages, as opposed to anagenesis, phyletic evolution within ...

based on classical concepts of

population genetics Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and between populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology. Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as adaptation, speciation, and pop ...

. Jerzy Jurka is the founder of Repbas

which he developed since 1990 with his team and other contributors. Repbase is the primary reference database of TEs used in

DNA annotation DNA annotation or genome annotation is the process of identifying the locations of genes and all of the coding regions in a genome and determining what those genes do. An annotation (irrespective of the context) is a note added by way of explanati ...

and analysis.

References

1950 births 2014 deaths Polish molecular biologists American molecular biologists {{biologist-stub