Norbert Perrimon (born October 24, 1958) is a geneticist and developmental biologist at Harvard Medical School. He is known for developing a number of techniques for use of '' Drosophila'', as well as specific substantive contributions to

signal transduction Signal transduction is the process by which a chemical or physical signal is transmitted through a cell as a series of molecular events, most commonly protein phosphorylation catalyzed by protein kinases, which ultimately results in a cellula ...

and

developmental biology Developmental biology is the study of the process by which animals and plants grow and develop. Developmental biology also encompasses the biology of Regeneration (biology), regeneration, asexual reproduction, metamorphosis, and the growth and di ...

. Perrimon co-developed the GAL4/UAS system method, described as “a fly geneticist's Swiss army knife”, with Andrea Brand to control gene expression. With Tze-bin Chou he developed the FLP-FRT DFS method to analyze the maternal effect of zygotic lethal mutations. With Jianquan Ni, he developed and improved methods for ''in vivo'' RNAi. His lab has pioneered high-throughput whole-genome RNAi

screening Screening may refer to: * Screening cultures, a type a medical test that is done to find an infection * Screening (economics), a strategy of combating adverse selection (includes sorting resumes to select employees) * Screening (environmental), a ...

. In 2003 he created the ''Drosophila'' RNAi Screening Center at Harvard Medical School and in 2008, he initiated the Transgenic RNAi Project to generate transgenic RNAi lines for the community using optimized shRNA vectors that his lab developed.

Education

Perrimon was born in 1958 in

Bosguérard-de-Marcouville Bosguérard-de-Marcouville () is a former commune in the Eure department in Normandy in northern France. On 1 January 2017, it was merged into the new commune Les Monts du Roumois.University of Paris VI, in 1981, then completed his doctorate in 1983 with Madeleine Gans, also at the University of Paris.

Career

From 1983 to 1986 Perrimon was a postdoctoral researcher with

Anthony Mahowald Anthony Mahowald (born November 24, 1932) is a molecular genetics and cellular biologist who served as the department chair of the molecular genetics and cellular biology department at the University of Chicago. His lab focused on the Drosophila ...

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Reser ...

, and in 1986 at the age of he accepted appointment as faculty at Harvard Medical School. He is currently the James Stillman Professor of Developmental Biology in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. He has been an Investigator of the

Howard Hughes Medical Institute The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an American non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, an American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, fil ...

since 1986.

Awards and honors

Perrimon was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in April 2013, after naturalizing as an American citizen. * Lucille P. Markey Scholar in Biomedical Sciences, 1985. * Investigator,

, 1986–present * Chaire d’Etat. College de France. Paris, 2003 * George W. Beadle Award, George W. Beadle Medal, Genetics Society of America, 2004 * RNAi Innovator Award, 2009 * Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2008 * Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2009 * Associate member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) 2011 * Fellow of the United States National Academy of Sciences, 2013

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Perrimon, Norbert Living people 1958 births French geneticists Developmental biologists University of Paris alumni Harvard Medical School faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences