JACK W. SZOSTAK

BY: C A R LY S T E P I C

EARLY LIFE

• Born: November 9, 1952 in London, England.

• He has two sisters, Kathy and Carolyn.

• During his lifetime he had moved all over the world, London, Germany, Montreal and Ottawa, because of his father being in the air force

• Jack Szostak and his family finally settled down in Montreal and he attended Riverdale High School, where he graduated when he was 15.

• At 19, he graduated from McGill University with a degree in cell biology and then completed his PhD for biochemistry at Cornell University.

SZOSTAK RESEARCH:• H E B E G A N S T U DY I N G A S I N G L E

C E L L E D O R G A N I S M , T E T R A H Y M E N A , W H E N H E N O T I C E D A S E Q U E N C E I N T H E D N A , C C C C A A .

• S Z O S TA K S T U D I E D T H AT T H I S S T R A N D O F D N A Q U I C K LY D E G R A D E S W H E N I N T R O D U C E D T O Y E A S T C E L L S .

• H E B E L I E V E D T H AT T E L O M E R E S P R E V E N T E D T H E A G I N G O F T H E C E L L S .

• A F T E R A C O U P L E Y E A R S H E S TA RT E D A N O U T B R E A K I N T H E M E D I C A L F I E L D W I T H T H I S R E S E A R C H .

Tetrahymena

THE DISCOVERY

• Szostak, along with Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider, discovered that when you combine the DNA sequence, CCCCAA, from their research with telomere at the end of the strand and put them into yeast cells, the telomere protected them from degrading.

• This discovery concluded that telomere prevented chromosomal damage and delayed the aging of the cells in the body.

• With this discovery many other scientist began to believe that with telomere that cancer can be treated using telomere.

• Szostak and his colleagues helped to make the science world more understanding of the cell and paved the way for other scientist after them.

PRESENT DAY• Since his Noble Prize win 2009 Szostak has shifted his research into the areas of RNA

and how life began.

• Jack W. Szostak became a professor at Harvard Medical School in 1988

• Since 1998, after he became and official US citizen, Szostak

has been an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

• At Harvard Medical School there is a lab named

"Szostak Lab" commemorating his Noble Prize studying

the liposomes, RNA replicases and TNA polymerases.

• His own personal lab now only focuses on the

origins of life and construction of artificial cell life.

Szostak’s lab group at Harvard

PR IZES /AWARDS• N AT I O N A L A C A D E M Y O F S C I E N C E S

AWA R D I N M O L E C U L A R B I O LO G Y ( 1 9 9 4 )

• S I G R I S T P R I Z E F R O M T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F B E R N ( 1 9 9 7 )

• T H E M E D A L O F T H E G E N E T I C S S O C I E T Y O F A M E R I C A ( 2 0 0 0 )

• L A S E R AWA R D ( 2 0 0 6 )

• T H E H . P. H E I N E K E N P R I Z E I N B I O P H Y S I C S A N D B I O C H E M I S T RY ( 2 0 0 8 )

• N O B L E P R I Z E I N P S YC H O LO G Y O R M E D I C I N E ( 2 0 0 9 )

Jack W. Szostak after receiving his Noble

Prize