Robert Lee Metzenberg (June 11, 1930 – July 15, 2007) 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 ...
known for his work on genetic regulation and
metabolism
Metabolism (, from el, μεταβολή ''metabolē'', "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. The three main functions of metabolism are: the conversion of the energy in food to energy available to run c ...
with
Neurospora crassa
''Neurospora crassa'' is a type of red bread mold of the phylum Ascomycota. The genus name, meaning "nerve spore" in Greek, refers to the characteristic striations on the spores. The first published account of this fungus was from an infestation ...
.
Education and early life
Robert Lee Metzenberg was born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. In 1951 Metzenberg graduated from
Pomona College
Pomona College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It was established in 1887 by a group of Congregationalists who wanted to recreate a "college of the New England type" in Southern California. In 1925, it became t ...
in California where he had specialised in chemistry with physics and biology as minor subjects. He then studied at the California Institute of Technology and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1955. 1951 and 1955, he earned a PhD at California Institute of Technology in the Division of Biological Sciences supervised by
Herschel K. Mitchell. During this time he met and was influenced by several geneticists including
George Beadle
George Wells Beadle (October 22, 1903 – June 9, 1989) was an American geneticist. In 1958 he shared one-half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Edward Tatum for their discovery of the role of genes in regulating biochemical eve ...
,
Alfred Sturtevant
Alfred Henry Sturtevant (November 21, 1891 – April 5, 1970) was an American geneticist. Sturtevant constructed the first genetic map of a chromosome in 1911. Throughout his career he worked on the organism ''Drosophila melanogaster'' with ...
,
Herschel K. Mitchell and
Max Delbrück
Max Ludwig Henning Delbrück (; September 4, 1906 – March 9, 1981) was a German–American biophysicist who participated in launching the molecular biology research program in the late 1930s. He stimulated physical scientists' interest int ...
.
Career
In 1955 Metzenberg was appointed as a professor at the
University of Wisconsin
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, ...
where he remained until he retired in 1996. In 1977 he was appointed the John Bascom Professor by the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents.
From 1996 he was a research professor at Stanford University and was also an adjunct professor at
California State University
The California State University (Cal State or CSU) is a public university system in California. With 23 campuses and eight off-campus centers enrolling 485,550 students with 55,909 faculty and staff, CSU is the largest four-year public univers ...
Northridge, from 2005. He continued laboratory research at his home until the day he died in 2007.
He was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...
continuously from 1961 until his death.
His research, using the fungus ''Neurospora crass'', was essential for its continued development as a model organism in the latter half of the twentieth century, and he became a central point in the research community. Metzenberg and his collaborators studied sulphur and phosphate
assimilation, uncovering the complex genetic control of these pathways. They also created the first molecular map of the Nurospora
genome
In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding g ...
, making use of the dispersed
5S rRNA
The 5S ribosomal RNA (5S rRNA) is an approximately 120 nucleotide-long ribosomal RNA molecule with a mass of 40 kDa. It is a structural and functional component of the large subunit of the ribosome in all domains of life (bacteria, archaea, and e ...
genes and technology that was an early independent implement of
RFLP analysis.
This led to the application of molecular genetic technologies to advance understanding of Neurospora. It became the first filamentous fungus to have a fully sequenced genome.
His research group characterised the mating-type A allele of ''N. crassa''.
From the mid-1990s he also uncovered a novel gene-silencing mechanism, meiotic silencing of unpaired DNA (MSUD), that was related to
RNAi
RNA interference (RNAi) is a biological process in which RNA molecules are involved in sequence-specific suppression of gene expression by double-stranded RNA, through translational or transcriptional repression. Historically, RNAi was known by ...
and explained many previously unexplained aberrations in
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 r ...
in Neurospora and other fungi.
Awards and honors
He was awarded the Thomas Hunt Morgan Award from
Caltech
The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...
in 1954 and the American Cancer Society and John and Mary Markle postdoctoral awards during his postdoctoral research. He received a U.S. Public Health Service Research Career Development Award for the period 1963–1973.
He was president of the
Genetics Society of America in 1990 and elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 1996.
He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1997.
In 2005 he was awarded the
Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal
The Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal is awarded by the Genetics Society of America (GSA) for lifetime contributions to the field of genetics.
The medal is named after Thomas Hunt Morgan, the 1933 Nobel Prize winner, who received this award for his work wi ...
by the Genetics Society of America for his lifetimes achievements.
[*]
Personal life
He met Helene Fox from California while he was studying for his Ph.D. and they married in 1954.
They had two children together. After his retirement they returned to California in 2002.
Legacy
In 2004 the Neurospora research community established an award in his name.
This is awarded every 2 – 4 years for innovative research that has significantly advanced understanding of Neurospora and biology in general by a researcher at any stage of career development. Awardees have included
N. Louise Glass in 2019.
External links
Rowland H. Davis and Eric U. Selker, "Robert Lee Metzenberg Jr.", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2008)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Metzenberg, Robert
1930 births
2007 deaths
American geneticists
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences