Michael R. Botchan

Professor of Biochemistry,Biophysics and Structural Biology at UC Berkeley. Impacted current views of eukaryotic DNA replication, recombination, gene expression, and neoplastic transformation caused by DNA tumor virus.He developed methods to study viral genome integration and excision developing the methods to detect integrated viral genomes. He and colleagues determined the mechanisms  for the Bovine Papilloma Virus DNA replication in vitro and showed that this pathway is general for Human and other cancer causing HPV's. The concept which he later developed for host DNA chromosoem replication is that initiator proteins use molecular interactions with transcription factors to target sites for DNA replication initiation. This work has lead to the development of a drug now in clinical trails targeted towards HPV11 and 6. Botchan's group was the first to characterize a metazoan origin replication complex working with Drosophila. Botchan's work establishes that the ORC has no sequence specific DNA binding ability. He and his students first defined the active helicase complex they called the CMG that unwinds the powers the replisome through unwinding the duplex.