Fotis Kafatos

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Fotis Constantine Kafatos ( Greek Φώτης Καφάτος , born April 16, 1940 in Iraklio , Crete ; † November 18, 2017 ibid.) Was a Greek biologist, molecular biologist, immunologist and malaria researcher.

Life

Kafatos studied zoology at Cornell University until his bachelor's degree in 1961 and then biology at Harvard University , where he made his master's degree in 1962 and received his doctorate in 1965. He then rose at Harvard from Assistant Professor (1965) to Professor (1969) and Head (1978-1982) of the Department of Cellular and Developmental Biology (Cellular and Developmental Biology). He held his professorship at Harvard until 1994. In addition, he was professor of biology at the University of Athens from 1972 to 1982 and was professor at the University of Crete since 1982 , where he was founding director of the Institute for Molecular Biology and Biotechnology in Heraklion from 1982 to 1993. From 1993 to 2005 he was Director General of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg. From 2005 until his death he was Professor and Head of Immunogenetics at Imperial College London . He has also been Adjunct Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard (School of Public Health) since 2007.

Kafatos was involved in the development of the cDNA technique and cloning and studied the molecular developmental biology of insects. There he was a pioneer in studying the role of gene families (chorionic genes) in developmental biology.

In 1976 he sequenced and cloned the beta-globin gene and developed the dot blot as a precursor to DNA microarrays .

In particular, he dealt with the interaction of the malaria pathogen Plasmodium with its host insect Anopheles and how the mosquito gains immunity against the pathogen. He was involved in the sequencing of the genome of the Anopheles mosquito (Anopheles gambiae) in 2002 and also in the Drosophila sequencing project.

From 2007 to 2010 he was the first President of the European Research Council . He was a member of the Royal Society , the Pontifical Academy of Sciences , the National Academy of Sciences (1982), the Academia Europaea , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Académie des sciences . He was five times honorary doctor.

In his native Greece, too, he did a lot to promote research in biology by the state.

In 2010 he received the Robert Koch Medal .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Associated Press : Fotis Kafatos, Distinguished Greek Biologist, Dies at 77. In: The New York Times . November 18, 2017, accessed November 19, 2017 .
  2. ↑ CW Jones, N. Rosenthal, GC Rodakis, Kafatos Evolution of two major chorion multigene families as inferred from cloned cDNA and protein sequences , Cell , Volume 18, 1979, pp. 1317-1332
  3. ↑ A. Efstratiadis, Kafatos, AM Maxam AM, T. Maniatis Enzymatic in vitro synthesis of globin genes , Cell, Volume 7, 1976, pp. 279-288
  4. ↑ Kafatos, CW Jones, A. Efstratiadis Determination of nucleic acid sequence homologies and relative concentrations by a dot hybridization procedure , Nucleic Acids Res. , Vol. 7, 1979, pp. 1541-1552
  5. ↑ G. Dimopoulos, HM Müller, Kafatos How does Anopheles gambiae kill malaria parasites , Parasitologia, Volume 41, 1999, pp. 169-175
  6. ↑ Holt, Müller, Kafatos et al. a., The genome sequence of the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae , Science , Volume 298, 2002, pp. 129-149
personal data
SURNAME Kafatos, Fotis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kafatos, Fotis Constantine (full name); Καφάτος, Φώτης (Greek)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek biologist, molecular biologist, immunologist and malaria researcher
DATE OF BIRTH April 16, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Heraklion
DATE OF DEATH 18th November 2017
Place of death Heraklion