Fred Sherman (geneticist)

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Fred Sherman (born May 21, 1932 in Minneapolis , Minnesota , † September 16, 2013 ) was an American geneticist and biochemist . From 1961 he researched and taught at the University of Rochester in Rochester , New York , first in the Institute for Radiation Biology and Biophysics and finally for 15 years - until his retirement - as holder of the Chair of Biochemistry. Together with Gerald R. Fink , he laid the foundations for baker's yeast ( Saccharomyces cerevisiae ) to become a model organism for research into eukaryotic cells in the 1960s, particularly in the areas of genetics and molecular biology .

Life

Fred Sherman (birth name Freddie) was the son of Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine , his father ran a grocery store. After attending school, he studied at the University of Minnesota , where he received his bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1953 . He then moved to the University of California, Berkeley , where he first studied the genetics of yeast intensively , and in 1958 earned his doctorate ( Ph.D. ). Then he researched u. a. with Boris Ephrussi in Gif-sur-Yvette ( France ) and with the geneticist Herschel L. Roman ( University of Washington ). From 1961 Sherman worked at the University of Rochester.

He died in 2013 after a long illness, leaving behind his wife Elena Rustchenko-Bulgac, his children Mark and Rhea and six grandchildren.

Research topics

Long before the genetic material DNA could be sequenced , Fred Sherman developed a method to elucidate the sequence of DNA building blocks of the yeast gene CYC1. With the help of protein sequencing , he was able to display the first 15 amino acids of the protein iso-1 cytochrome c encoded by the yeast gene and to derive the associated nucleic bases from the amino acid sequence . Ultimately, his analyzes led to the fact that the start codon AUG of the mRNA , which had initially only been described for Escherichia coli , was recognized as the sole start codon of any protein translation in eukaryotes . In his laboratory, it was also shown that the codons UAA, UAG and UGA are universal stop codons .

The derivation of the sequence of the CYC1 gene enables the production of a synthetic oligodeoxyribonucleotide with the help of which the mRNA of a certain yeast protein gene could be identified for the first time. In addition, genes coding for tRNA were identified by Sherman .

Together with his colleague and friend Gerald R. Fink, Sherman organized a total of 17 summer courses at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory from 1970 , during which numerous established scientists, as well as students and postdocs , were introduced to working with yeast cells - one of them was Randy Schekman , the Was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2013 for his studies on biomembranes of yeast cells .

Honors

literature

  • Nicole Kresge, Robert D. Simoni, and Robert L. Hill: Isolation and Characterization of Cytochrome c Mutants: the Work of Fred Sherman. In: Journal of Biological Chemistry. Volume 285, No. 36, 2010, e11 – e13, doi: 10.1074 / jbc.O110.000234 , PMC 2938036 (free full text)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry by Fred Sherman on the server of the National Academy of Sciences in the USA
  2. ^ Susan W. Liebman and James E. Haber: Fred Sherman (1932-2013). In: Science . Volume 342, No. 6162, 2013, p. 1059, doi: 10.1126 / science.1248055
  3. ↑ Gerald R. Fink : In Memoriam Fred Sherman — The First Yeast Molecular Biologist. In: Genetics. Volume 196, No. 1, 2014, pp. 363-364, doi: 10.1534 / genetics.113.160184
  4. ^ Peter W. Sherwood: The Yeast Genetics Course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory: Thirty Years and Counting. In: Genetics. Volume 157, No. 4, 2001, pp. 1399-1402, full text
personal data
SURNAME Sherman, Fred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sherman, Freddie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American geneticist and biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH May 21, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Minneapolis , Minnesota
DATE OF DEATH 16th September 2013