Dr.
Jerry L. Workman
Stowers Institute for Medical Research
Molecular biologist; Research institution scientist
Area
Biological Sciences
Specialty
Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Molecular Biology
Elected
2013
Dr, Jerry Lee Workman is an Investigator of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research. Over the past twenty-plus years, Workman has made elegant contributions to understanding how genes are regulated and expressed in a living organism. Look in any high school biology textbook and you will likely see DNA described as the elegant double-stranded helix. You will learn that long strings of letters form genes, which get switched on to make RNA. Eventually, the RNA is translated into proteins that do work for the cell. It seems like a linear, straightforward process. But over the past three decades, Workman has shown, time and again, that gene regulation is much more complicated. The human DNA code is some 3 billion letters long; if stretched out in a line, it would span six feet. To squeeze into the tiny nucleus of each cell, every 200 letters or so the DNA wraps around protein balls, called histones, so that it resembles beads on a string. The necklace then gets folded and compressed many times over, ultimately forming finger-like chromosomes. Workman was one of the first scientists to discover that histone balls are not only important for the exquisite packaging of DNA. They're also crucial players in DNA's transcription into RNA. He has identified several groups of proteins that spur histones to loosen their grip on DNA, leaving it open to enzymes that can read its code and turn on genes. Figuring out how exactly this unwinding happens has significant implications for understanding natural phenomena—such as cell replication and tissue development—as well as how these processes can go awry, resulting in cancer and many other diseases. The Workman laboratory uses yeast, flies, and mammalian cells to identify and study the protein complexes that carry out these histone modifications and those that recognize the resulting signals, with important implications for human health. Workman has served on numerous boards and committees, including the NIH’s National Cancer Institute Board of Scientific Counselors, the Board of Reviewing Editor’s for Science magazine and the editorial board of Genes and Development. He is the recipient of numerous accolades for his work, including the Northern Illinois University Dean’s Award, the Leukemia Society of American Special Fellowship, the Pennsylvania State University Faculty Scholars Award for Outstanding Achievement, the Leukemia Society of American Stohlman Scholar Award, and is fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the American Academy of Microbiology in addition to his American Academy of Arts and Sciences membership. His publications appear in prominent journals including Cell, Nature, and Science.
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