Emile Zuckerkandl

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Emile Zuckerkandl (born July 4, 1922 in Vienna ; † November 9, 2013 in Palo Alto , California ) was an evolutionary biologist of Austrian origin who worked in France and the USA .

Life

His mother Gertrude Zuckerkandl was a daughter of the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Stekel . His grandmother Berta Zuckerkandl-Szeps , daughter of the liberal newspaper publisher Moritz Szeps , ran a prominent artist and literary salon in Vienna until 1938 like her mother. His grandfather Emil Zuckerkandl was an Austrian anatomist.

In 1938, Zuckerkandl fled from persecution by the National Socialists with mother and grandmother Berta († 1945 in Paris) to Paris and Algiers . After receiving a scholarship through Albert Einstein and Walther Mayer, he went to the USA in autumn 1946. In 1947 Zuckerkandl met his future wife Jane and graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in physiology .

He then returned to Paris and earned a doctorate in biology from the Sorbonne . With his wife - the couple had married in Paris in 1950 - he first lived in Brittany until 1959 by Linus Pauling to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena (California) was brought.

Emile Zuckerkandl can be seen as one of the co-founders of the research field of molecular evolution . For example, under the direction of and together with Linus Pauling, he postulated the hypothesis of a molecular clock in 1962 , according to which proteins change at a constant rate of mutation . In 1965 he was appointed to the Center national de la recherche scientifique in Montpellier , where he founded and directed a research center for molecular biology. In 1977 he returned to California and was President of the Linus Pauling Institute and, from 1992, President of the successor Institute for Molecular Medicine .

In 2012, the Austrian National Library from Zuckerkandl bought his personal archive with the autographs of famous personalities, as they went to and from his grandmother in Vienna, with many letters to Berta Zuckerkandl and with her report on the flight from France to Algiers with Emile. In 2013 Theresia Klugsberger and Ruth Pleyer published this report under the title Flucht! Bourges to Algiers in the summer of 1940. in Czernin Verlag published in Vienna.

Publications (selection)

  • Emile Zuckerkandl, Richard T Jones, Linus Pauling : A comparison of animal hemoglobins by tryptic peptide pattern analysis. In: Proc Natl Acad Sci USA , 46/10, 1960, pp. 1349-1360, PMC 223050 (free full text)
  • E Zuckerkandl: Controller-gene diseases: The operon model as applied to beta- thalassemia , familial fetal hemoglobinemia and the normal switch from the production of fetal hemoglobin to that of adult hemoglobin. In: J Mol Biol , 8, 1964, pp. 128-147.
  • E Zuckerkandl, Linus Pauling: Molecules as documents of evolutionary history. In: J Theor Biol , 8/2, 1965, pp. 357-366.
  • E Zuckerkandl, J Derancourt, H Vogel: Mutational trends and random processes in the evolution of informational macromolecules. In: J Mol Biol , 59/3, 1971, pp. 473-490.
  • E Zuckerkandl: Some aspects of protein evolution. In: Biochimie 54/9, 1972, pp. 1095-1102.
  • E Zuckerkandl: A possible role of “inert” heterochromatin in cell differentiation. Action of and competition for “locking” molecules. In: Biochimie , 56 / 6-7, 1974, pp. 937-954.
  • E Zuckerkandl: The appearance of new structures and functions in proteins during evolution. In: J Mol Evol , 7/1, 1975, pp. 1-57.
  • E Zuckerkandl: Evolutionary processes and evolutionary noise at the molecular level. I .: Functional density in proteins. In: J Mol Evol , 7/3, 1976: 167-183. II .: A selectionist model for random fixations in proteins. In: J Mol Evol , 7/4, 1976, pp. 269-311.
  • E Zuckerkandl: Multilocus enzymes, gene regulation , and genetic sufficiency. In: J Mol Evol , 12/1, 1978, pp. 57-89.
  • E Zuckerkandl: On the molecular evolutionary clock. In: J Mol Evol , 26 / 1-2, 1987, pp. 34-46.
  • E Zuckerkandl: Revisiting junk DNA . In: J Mol Evol , 34/3, 1992: 259-271.
  • E Zuckerkandl: Junk DNA and sectorial gene repression. In: Gene , 205 / 1-2, 1997, pp. 323-343.
  • E Zuckerkandl: Neutral and non-neutral mutations: The creative mix-evolution of complexity in gene interaction systems. In: J Mol Evol , 44/4, 1997: 470. Erratum notice in: J Mol Evol , 44, 1997, Suppl 1, pp. S2-8.
  • E Zuckerkandl: Sectorial gene repression in the control of development. In: Gene , 238/1, 1999, pp. 263-276.
  • E Zuckerkandl: Why so many noncoding nucleotides ? The eukaryote genome as an epigenetic machine . In: Genetica , 115/1, 2002, pp. 105-129.

literature

  • Bertha Zuckerkandl, Theresia Klugsberger, Ruth Pleyer (eds.): Flucht! From Bourges to Algiers in the summer of 1940 . Czernin, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-7076-0456-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Emile Zuckerkandl 1922–2013 . derStandard.at, November 18, 2013; Retrieved November 18, 2013
  2. ↑ Farewell forever . derStandard.at, June 3, 2011; Retrieved December 10, 2013
  3. ^ Thomas Trenkler: National library acquires Zuckerkandl archive . In: Der Standard , Vienna, November 27, 2012, p. 25
personal data
SURNAME Zuckerkandl, Emile
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American evolutionary biologist
DATE OF BIRTH 4th July 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH November 9, 2013
Place of death Palo Alto , California