Marilyn S. Kozak is an American professor of

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 the

Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School is a medical school of Rutgers University. It is one of the two graduate medical schools of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, together with New Jersey Medical School, and is closely aligned with R ...

. She was previously at the

University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) was a state-run health sciences institution of New Jersey, United States. It was founded as the Seton Hall College of Medicine and Dentistry in 1954, and by the 1980s was both a majo ...

before the school was merged. She was awarded a PhD in

microbiology Microbiology () is the scientific study of microorganisms, those being unicellular (single cell), multicellular (cell colony), or acellular (lacking cells). Microbiology encompasses numerous sub-disciplines including virology, bacteriology, prot ...

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

studying the synthesis of the

Bacteriophage MS2 Bacteriophage MS2 (''Emesvirus zinderi''), commonly called MS2, is an icosahedral, positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus that infects the bacterium ''Escherichia coli'' and other members of the Enterobacteriaceae. MS2 is a member of a family ...

, advised by

Daniel Nathans Daniel Nathans (October 30, 1928 – November 16, 1999) was an American microbiologist. He shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of restriction enzymes and their application in restriction mapping. Early life a ...

. In her original faculty job proposal, she sought to study the mechanism of

eukaryotic 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 ...

translation Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...

initiation, a problem long thought to have already been solved by

Joan Steitz Joan Elaine Argetsinger Steitz (born January 26, 1941) is Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University and Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She is known for her discoveries involving RNA, incl ...

. While in the Department of Biological Sciences at

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the universit ...

, she published a series of studies that established the scanning model of

initiation and the

Kozak consensus sequence The Kozak consensus sequence (Kozak consensus or Kozak sequence) is a nucleic acid motif that functions as the protein translation initiation site in most eukaryotic mRNA transcripts. Regarded as the optimum sequence for initiating translation in ...

. Her current research interests are unknown as her last publication was in 2008.

Recognition

Marilyn Kozak was listed as one of the top 10 Women Scientists of the 80's in an article published by The Scientist. This was awarded based on the number of citations for their published work between 1981-1988. During this time, Kozak had 3,107 citations. Her most cited work was from 1984, entitled "Compilation and analysis of sequences upstream from the translational start site in eukaryotic

mRNAs In molecular biology, messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) is a single-stranded molecule of RNA that corresponds to the genetic sequence of a gene, and is read by a ribosome in the process of synthesizing a protein. mRNA is created during the p ...

". This paper highlighted the research that brought the known cellular mRNAs from 32 to 166.

Controversy

In March 2001, Kozak published a mini-review in the Journal of

Molecular and Cellular Biology ''Molecular and Cellular Biology'' is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of molecular and cellular biology. It is published by the American Society for Microbiology and the editor-in-chief is Peter Tontonoz (University ...

entitled "New Ways of Initiating Translation in Eukaryotes?" that resulted in push-back from the scientific community. In her publication, Kozak discussed her hesitation towards the role of cellular

internal ribosome entry site An internal ribosome entry site, abbreviated IRES, is an RNA element that allows for translation initiation in a cap-independent manner, as part of the greater process of protein synthesis. In eukaryotic translation, initiation typically occurs at ...

s (IRES). This was most heavily refuted by Robert Schneider, who published a response article of the same name in the same Journal in Dec. 2001. In this response, Schneider claimed that in publishing her mini-review, Kozak hoped to increase the validity of her own findings. He further stated that Kozak's publication was not up to scholarly standards and should not have been accepted into the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Biology. Later work largely supports Kozak's claim that the existence of most cellular IRESes is not supported by the available evidence. Later impacts of this controversy, including a suggestion that Kozak was defunded by the

National Institute of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

(NIH), was explored in the blog post "First Human Bioinformatician Criticizes Bad Science Of NIH-Funded Bigshots Disappears", written in 2015.

Contributions

Along with her published work, Kozak has contributed to the scientific community with her role on the editorial board for the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Biology. She has been listed intermittently as an editor between the years 1983-1991.

Selected works

This is a selection of Kozak's work but not a complete list. * * * *. * * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kozak, Marilyn S. Living people Place of birth missing (living people) American women biochemists Johns Hopkins University alumni University of Pittsburgh faculty 1943 births American women academics 21st-century American women