Melvin I. Simon
Biography
MELVIN I. SIMON
Dr. Melvin I. Simon received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1959 from the City College of New York, and his Ph.D. degree in 1963 from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University in 1965, he joined the University of California, San Diego. In 1982 he moved to the Division of Biology at the California Institute of Technology, where he served as the Anne P. and Benjamin F. Biaggini Professor of Biological Sciences, and is currently Emeritus (active). In 2007 Dr. Simon returned to UCSD as Adjunct Professor in the Department of Pharmacology, in the School of Medicine and retired in 2013.
Dr. Simon has worked on the mechanism of site-specific recombination in bacteria and on the mechanism of bacterial movement and chemotaxis. He and his colleagues were the first to demonstrate that bacterial flagella were driven by a rotary motor. They also uncovered the mechanism of phase variation showing that the specific inversion of a segment of DNA that carries a flagellin promoter region controlled the ability of the organism to switch from one flagellar antigen type to another. Dr. Simon's laboratory helped characterize the components involved in sensory transduction in bacterial chemotaxis. They were the first to show that the process involved protein-histidine phosphorylation and helped define the nature of "two component" sensory systems in bacteria. They subsequently determined the three-dimensional atomic structure of the protein histidine kinase that plays a central role in this process.
Dr. Simon's most recent contributions have advanced our understanding of signal transduction and intracellular signaling in animal cells. G-protein subunits play a crucial role in transmitting signals from cell surface receptors resulting in changes in intracellular metabolism. They are central to the functions of the visual, gustatory, olfactory and nervous systems in complex organisms. Dr. Simon’s laboratory played a major role in the characterization of the genes that encode the subunit proteins that make up the G protein family. He and his co-workers have generated a variety of mutant mice deficient in components of the G-protein signaling cascade. Their work on the visual system together with Dr. Denis Baylor’s laboratory at Stanford has helped to define the in vivo function of elements of the G-protein mediated phototransduction cascade, and the molecular mechanisms involved in retinal degeneration. More recently Dr. Simon has been working on G-protein receptors that are involved in nociception.
Dr. Simon’s group has also played an important role in the Human Genome Project. They invented the Bacterial Artificial Chromosome (BAC) vector and built many of the initial libraries that provided the basic material for the Human Genome Project. They played an integral role in developing the maps of human chromosomes 16 and 22. Their work was the basis for the determination of the complete sequence of chromosome 22. His group also explored the extension of genomic technology to understanding the role of microorganisms and their functions in environmental systems. His interest in environmental microbiology was one of the factors that led to the founding of Diversa Corporation in 1994.
In recognition of his research accomplishments, Dr. Simon received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1978. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1985, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986 and received the Selman Waxman award from the National Academy of Sciences in 1991. He chaired a variety of national and international meetings and has presented many special named lectures. Dr. Simon served as Chairman of the Division of Biology at the California Institute of Technology from 1995-2000.
Dr. Simon has been involved in a variety of capacities with philanthropic and commercial organizations. He is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Agouron Institute and he was a founding member of Agouron Pharmaceuticals. He was also a founder and a member of the Board of Directors of Diversa (aka Verenium) Corporation. Dr. Simon has served as a member of the Advisory Board of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the advisory board of the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion), the Hutchinson Institute, the Board of Governors of the American Society of Microbiology, and as a member of a variety of advisory committees for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. Dr. Simon published over 350 research articles in peer-reviewed journals in addition to a variety of research reviews. He has served on the Editorial Board of a number of journals and was co-editor-in-chief with Dr. John Abelson of the Methods in Enzymology series.
From Dr. Sydney Brenner:“Its remarkable how quickly young Turks turn into old Greeks. To try and escape from that has certainly been one of my great ambitions. And perhaps that’s why I now am changing my field more frequently. I calculate that if I go on at this rate and live long enough I’ll be in a new field every week.”