Paul Michael Wassarman (born March 26, 1940) is an American biologist who has been Professor in the Dept. of Cell, Developmental, and Regenerative Biology at the

Icahn School of Medicine The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS or Mount Sinai), formerly the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, is a private medical school in New York City. It is the academic teaching arm of the Mount Sinai Health System, which manages eight ...

at Mount Sinai since 1996 (Chairman 2000-2007). His laboratory identified and characterised proteins that make up the zona pellucida (ZP) of mammalian eggs and determined their role in fertilisation.

Education

He earned his B.S. and M.S. from the University of Massachusetts, a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Brandeis University (1963–1967; Advisor, N.O.Kaplan), and was a postdoctoral fellow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, England (1967–1970; Sponsor, J.C.Kendrew).

Career

He was a faculty member in the Dept. of Biological Chemistry at Harvard Medical School (1972–1986) and in the Dept. of Cell and Developmental Biology at the

Roche Institute of Molecular Biology The Roche Institute of Molecular Biology was created on July 14, 1967 when John Burns, then the vice president of research at Hoffman-La Roche, persuaded biochemist Sidney Udenfriend to leave the National Institutes of Health and help him create ...

(1986–1996; Chairman 1987-1992) before joining the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Academic work

His main research contributions lie in the areas of mammalian oogenesis and fertilization, particularly on the structure and function of the egg's ZP. His laboratory identified and characterised proteins that make up the ZP, identified growing oocytes as the site of synthesis of ZP proteins, demonstrated that two ZP proteins serve as sperm receptors during fertilization and are inactive following fertilization, identified regions of ZP polypeptides involved in ZP protein secretion and assembly, and proposed a structure for fibrils that constitute the ZP He edited six volumes of ''Methods in Enzymology'' and four volumes of ''Current Topics in Developmental Biology'', was series editor of ''Advances in Developmental Biology/Biochemistry'', has been series editor of ''Current Topics in Developmental Biology'' since 2007, and authored "''A Guide to Zona Pellucida Domain Proteins''" (Wiley, 2015) and "''A Place in History: the Biography of John C. Kendrew''" (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Awards and honors

He was an NIH predoctoral fellow, Helen Hay Whitney Foundation postdoctoral fellow,

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...

special research fellow, and Lillian and Henry M. Stratton Professorial Chair. He has been an advisor to NIH, NSF, ERC, NSC, WHO, Wellcome Trust, Schering AG, and Hoffmann-La Roche and delivered the Helen Mangelsdorph, M.C. Chang, James E. Leatham, Ernst Schering, Alan S. Parkes, and Luigi Mastroianni memorial lectures.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wassarman, Paul M. Living people American biologists Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai faculty Harvard Medical School faculty University of Massachusetts alumni Brandeis University alumni 1940 births