Dear Members of the HMS Community,
Today we are honored by the thrilling news that Jack Szostak, HMS professor of Genetics at Massachusetts General Hospital, has received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider, for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.
Jack Szostak speaks at a press conference a few hours after the Nobel Prize announcement.
Jack has been a member of the Harvard medical faculty for 30 years, and he is the 13th HMS faculty member to win the Nobel Prize. He is a member of both the HMS Department of Genetics and the Mass General Department of Molecular Biology.
Jack's Nobel-winning research showcases the fundamental importance of basic science and how it can open up an entire field of investigation. His research focused on the stability of chromosomes in yeast cells. Working with Elizabeth Blackburn, he demonstrated that the sequences at the ends of chromosomes of one species could protect the chromosomes of a very distant species. Insightfully, he recognized that this implied the existence of an entirely new enzymatic activity in cells that function to protect the ends of chromosomes from degradation. This discovery, cited by the Nobel committee, has impacted our understanding of aging and led to potential treatments for cancer and other diseases.
By 1991, Jack shifted the entire focus of his lab to evolving new functional RNAs and other molecules in a test tube. To increase understanding of the earliest evolution of life, he is exploring the origins of functional biological macromolecules and membranes. Today, Jack's main focus is the construction of a simple artificial cell that can grow and divide as well as evolve in a Darwinian sense to adapt to its changing environment.
I encourage you to read the Nobel announcement and the story of Jack's work.
Please join me in congratulating Jack on this historic honor.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey S. Flier, MD
Dean, Faculty of Medicine
Harvard Medical School
