James T. Kadonaga

James T. Kadonaga significantly advanced the field of eukaryotic gene regulation by performing key experiments demonstrating that overcoming chromatin repression is an integral requirement of the transcription process and by defining the diversity of the promoter sequences that direct the initiation of transcription. His laboratory purified and cloned the factors that assemble chromatin, discovered a novel motor protein that rewinds complementary strands of DNA, and identified the prenucleosome, the only known conformational isomer of the nucleosome that is found in active chromatin. These discoveries provided fundamental insights into mechanisms of gene regulation and opened new paths of investigation.